


mouth full of white lies.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, Alcohol, Alpha Scott, Alternate Universe - Future, BDSM, Bathroom Sex, Begging, Cock Warming, College, Coming In Pants, Coming Untouched, Couch Sex, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Fraternities & Sororities, Future Fic, Humiliation, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Marijuana, Marking, Open Relationships, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Polyamory Negotiations, Power Dynamics, Praise Kink, Recreational Drug Use, Rimming, Rutting, Semi-Public Sex, Shotgunning, Slow Build, Subspace, Threesome, Threesome - M/M/M, Voyeurism, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 15:45:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7321135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott and Stiles have been scottandstiles for as long as Jackson can remember.  It used to make him frustrated, angry and aggressive.  Now it's almost a relief.  His feelings for Scott are easier to ignore when he doesn't let himself think about him at all.  It's much simpler to avoid thinking about Stiles' mouth or Scott's red eyes when Jackson knows he doesn't stand a chance at getting anywhere close to their Thing.  It's been years, now; they're going into their sophomore year of college, and Jackson has been so careful.</p><p>All his mental discipline goes out the window at a party held at his frat, where he sees Scott and Stiles getting high and making out down in the basement.  Scott and Stiles both catch him watching, and Scott doesn't say a word.  But if there's one thing Stiles is bad at, it's keeping his mouth shut.  It spirals quickly into power dynamics and sore knees from the floor of a bar bathroom, sharp teeth and even sharper words.  Making Jackson's heart pound, maybe even in more than just a physiological way, even as Stiles inches Jackson closer and closer to something more with Scott.</p><p>Scottandstiles doesn't easily give way to jacksonscottstiles.  But Jackson never asked for easy, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mouth full of white lies.

**Author's Note:**

> I would just like to say, this fic was super, super fun to write, and I'm pretty attached to it. But it never would've been possible without the love and support and encouragement of all you wonderful readers, especially my people in fandom corner. Taylor and Alex and Ellis and Lonnie all put up with all my months-long Jackson cries, to which I am extremely grateful.
> 
> Thank you also to my wonderful, wonderful artist, [Tabitha](http://suddenclarityharry.tumblr.com) for all her hard work! You were dabomb.com, and it was really cool seeing my fic come to life in art form.

It starts like this.  Sharp nails, sharp teeth, sore knees, sore throat.  Sore ass.  Dirty bathrooms and whispered words.  Secrets.

It starts with want.  With need wrapped tight inside him, waiting to eat him alive.  Shame roiling in his gut as images spiral in his head, plush lips and short, solid fingers.  Brown eyes and a crooked jaw.  It starts with a hatred that burns so brightly that even he knows it’s forced, knows that if he paused for a second to breathe and think, he’d see the softness there.  There’s nothing but softness there, buried under layers of resentment and jealousy.  Softness and desire.

It starts with all the things that Jackson won’t let himself have, especially not from Scott McCall.  So he goes a different route, chooses something he can have.  Something rough and sharp and easily manipulated.  Something he can push and push until he’s pushed back, until he feels rough and raw, settled.  There’s no kindness in it; or, if there is, it’s buried as well as Jackson’s, no gentle eyes or gentle hands.  It’s enough that he can breathe, no fear of hearing an “I love you” he can’t return.  No expectations beyond that Jackson will be awful, and that Stiles will be awful in return.

It’s perfect.

Or it would be, if that was where things ended.  

But - no, that’s not quite right.  

It starts before that.  It starts when Jackson is a little bit softer, when everyone’s a little bit younger.  Before Jackson learns that poking at bruises makes him feel, before he learns that being held down can be a release.  Before he learns the hot mix of shame and arousal that burns when he’s called names, filthy slut, dirty cocksucker.  

Before Scott gets hot, when he’s floppy hair and wide eyes, hiding in the corner of the gym in P.E. because he needs a new inhaler and “forgot” to ask his mom (again).  Before Stiles realizes he’s someone to be attracted to, when he’s all mouth and no common sense, and even less coordination, making up lies so ridiculous that the P.E. teacher lets him sit next to Scott because she’s not convinced he won’t injure someone flailing his arms around trying so hard to convince her.

It starts with Scott and Stiles, scottandstiles.  With Jackson watching from afar, jealousy in his gut.  With Jackson watching them hold hands while they walk along the curbs at recess, grinning like their worlds are filled up with each other.  Jackson has a best friend.  He has his Danny.  Even he and Danny look nothing like _them_.  

But this mess?  Jackson never would’ve connected up with any of that, as it was happening.  This doesn’t go so far back, or so deep.  

This starts with a college party and a lot of weed.

* * *

 

Jackson is bored.

He should’ve known he would be.  He was around school in the summer, with no job to occupy his time.  He knows he could’ve probably worked his way into an internship or something, cozied up to a professor or to one of his dad’s friends, but he didn’t need the money, and his guidance counselor didn’t seem too fussed.  So instead, he stayed in the frat house and fucked around, worked out a bunch at the gym to keep in shape.

Greek life isn’t quite what he expected it to be, and he’s learning that every party is the same; booze and girls and beer pong and cleaning up puke from the bathroom and the hallway in the morning.  The free booze he’s had access to since high school, fake IDs at his fingertips, and the girls he’s picky about.  The puke he’s finally going to be free of, now that he’s heading into his second year.  There will be new first years to dump that responsibility off on, younger students eager to suck up and pay their dues.

It’s the last party of the summer, unofficial and open to anyone Greek life and their plus ones that are still on campus.  Everyone he ever gave a fuck about from high school is at this party, but none of them are doing anything he cares about.  Danny’s off helping the DJ, a frat brother whose pants he wants in, with tech issues.  Jackson’s hoping that Danny manages to drag him off to a bedroom before the music is fixed, because Jackson’s heard the guy’s DJing skills, and they leave a lot to be desired.  He’s pretty sure that Lydia’s boning, off in some room somewhere.  Allison disappeared early on in the night, to god knows where.  Maybe they’re in the same place.  Maybe they took Malia with them.  Jackson doesn’t know, and the feeling of not giving a rat’s ass is beautiful, after all the shit that went down with his and Lydia’s breakup.

It does leave him with nothing to do, though, besides sit in the living room and sip vodka tonics.  He messes with his phone, scrolling through Facebook and glancing occasionally around the room.  He wants to commit to looking Appropriately Disinterested, enough to deter the less confident and to ensure that he’s left alone, but also to ensure that if something important happens, he’ll to be the first to see it.

It works, for a little.  There’s a girl with cheekbones as sharp as his who settles in next to him to talk for a while, which he doesn’t mind at all.  He wraps his arm around her and winds up with a phone number when she leaves to look out for a drunk friend.  A guy from another frat sends him flirty looks from across the room, and Jackson knows that if he holds out and plays it coy, the other guy will make the first move.

He never gets the chance to see it happen, though.  He’s sending another glance under his eyelashes when the frat president comes up to him and asks him to get more booze from the cooler downstairs.  Jackson is angling for a position, and the last thing he wants to do is lose the frat president’s attention over a hot dude.  So he gets up, figuring that going downstairs and coming back up won’t take long, and he can resume his eyefucking.

The lights are already all on as he heads down the stairs, because that’s where the drugs always are, at any of the frat parties.  The rule of thumb is that as long as no one gets busted, no one says a word.  Jackson usually avoids it, not because he has anything against the drugs, but because he doesn’t want to be the dumbass who loses his place on the swim team or the lacrosse team because he tests positive for whatever shit it is they’re doing down there.

The smoke hangs heavy in the air, enough to dim and fracture the high-hanging lights.  Jackson feels like he could get a second-hand high just from lingering too long, and it’s a miracle the smoke detector hasn’t sent them all stumbling out onto the street.  He pushes through the group hanging out at the very bottom of the stairs and stumbles to the Alcohol Storage Room, unlocking it with the key he got when he was initiated.  The air there smells of stale, spilled beer, but he’d take it any day over the smell of weed and tobacco clogging up his lungs.  He goes ahead and grabs the whole cooler to bring up - it’s small enough that he can easily carry it, and he figures what they don’t use, he can bring back down after and store in the fridge.

He takes his time going back to the stairs.  The smoke obscures some of the trash littering the floor, and carrying the cooler makes it hard for Jackson to see what’s in front of him.  

It’s not what he sees, though, but what he hears, that makes him almost drop the cooler.

“Scott.  Fuck, _Scotty_.”

The voice is frighteningly, obnoxiously familiar, even though it’s dryer and rougher than Jackson remembers it being.  He knows who it is in an instant, though; there’s only one Scott that Jackson knows in a frat, and he brings the same plus one every single time.  Jackson tries to ignore the voice, but it settles in his gut, sourness to counteract the sweet stickiness of the weed he’s sucked into his lungs.  He knows it’s a terrible idea, but he lets himself look towards the couch where the sound came from.  Just a quick glance, he figures, should be okay.

Just a quick glance would have confirmed his suspicions.  There’s the familiar, messy, brown hair, the pale skin dotted with moles.  The long fingers carelessly holding a blunt, the lips pink and puffy, his teeth pressing indents and pulling the thin skin taut.

Jackson keeps watching, though, in spite of himself.  The blunt burns in Stiles’ hand, the edges of the paper orange and ash, dipping closer to the couch the more distracted he gets.  Jackson can’t help it; he lets himself look at the boy underneath Stiles, bracketed in by Stiles’ long legs on the couch cushions, Stiles straddling his lap.  His mouth is pressed against Stiles’ neck, tracing the edges of fading bruises.  His eyes are rimmed red, his pupils blown.  Jackson almost expects to see his eyes flash red from the way he’s pressed against Stiles, loose and grinning, licking sweat from the dip of Stiles’ neck, marking Stiles as his.  It makes Jackson hot, in a way he wants to blame on the muggy air of the crowded basement.  Stiles looks almost lost in it, and Jackson feels like they’re two steps away from someone coming in their pants, whether it’s by each other’s hands or by the friction of their bodies against each other.  But then, Stiles’ eyes are cracking open, dark brown in the low lighting, and he catches sight of the blunt in his hand.  

“Scott,” Stiles says, reaching his hand over and lazily, half-heartedly pushing Scott away from his neck.  “We have weed, dude.  Don’t wanna waste it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Scott says.  “We should shotgun, so we can share.”

“Bro, you’re a genius,” Stiles says, grinning at Scott.  He licks his lips and brings the blunt back up to his mouth, his chest rising as he inhales and holds the smoke in his lungs.  Jackson watches the exhale from his mouth to Scott’s, watches Scott’s eyes slip closed as the smoke eventually spills back into the air, tumbling out as Scott goes loose, melting back into the couch.

Jackson’s hands are sweaty, and the cooler slips out, making a loud thump against the carpeted floor.  Jackson jumps and swears, his eyes ripped from Scott and Stiles.  He’s embarrassed; he was just standing there, watching those two fucking dorks.  It’s enough to jolt him from the moment and to remind him of the task at hand.  He picks up the cooler and tries to regain his chill, reminding himself that he doesn’t want to see them getting off together.  He really, really does not want to see them getting off together.

He misses Scott’s eyes on him while he collects himself, the way Stiles cranes his neck to follow Jackson’s movement up the stairs.

When he deposits the drinks near the table, he’s dismayed to see that the hot guy isn’t even there anymore.

Fuck college parties.

* * *

 

Jackson is almost relieved when the school year starts.  The summer dragged on too long, and Jackson doesn’t actually mind school.  The slog work and gen ed requirements of first year are done, and he’s in a position now where his competitive desires can be even more satisfied, now that he’s going to be taking more courses in his major.  He’s happy enough with his schedule.

Or, at least, he is until he actually goes to his first class.

He gets there early and sits closer to the front.  If there’s one thing Jackson understands from Beacon Hills High, it’s how to play the brownnosing game, how to make the right professors appreciate him.  In bigger classes, professors notice the people who sit near the front.  He’ll speak up a few times near the beginning of the year, stop in a few times to office hours with well-thought-out questions, and the professors will learn his name.  He’ll be set, from there, on participation points.

The seat next to him on one side is filled by Danny, which suits both of them just fine.  The seat on the other side stays empty as the rest of the room fills in, people scared away by Jackson’s deliberately unfriendly, flat stare.  Jackson is preemptively pleased with the idea that he avoided some stranger plopping down next to him.

Until, of course, with four minutes left before the class starts, in a bluster of flailing limbs, Stiles fumbles his way through the row and pulls the seat out, nearly knocking down Jackson’s coffee as he swings his backpack down.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Jackson says.  Stiles doesn’t acknowledge it, pulling out his notebook and his textbook, letting them both thunk down on the table as he searches his pocket for a pen.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” Stiles replies.  He turns his attention back to Jackson, his hair wild and windblown.  

Jackson gestures to the back of the room.  “There’s a room full of chairs that are not here.  All of them fit your skinny ass.”

“Scott wanted me to talk to you.  We’re having a back to school thing.  At our place, not the frat house.  For some reason, he actually seems to want you there, which, trust me, probably makes even less sense to me than it does to you, but-”

“No,” Jackson says immediately.  He can already tell how horrible of an idea that would be.  An apartment is an even smaller space than the frat house, which would mean he would be forced to interact with Scott and Stiles and whatever dorky friends they invite.  It would be dull, at best, and a repeat of the last frat party, at worst.  It doesn’t sound appealing to Jackson, at all.  “I don’t want to go to your boring party.”

The offense that spreads across Stiles’ face is almost comical to Jackson.  His eyebrows furrow and his mouth goes wide, words already threatening to spill out.

“I’m passing around copies of the syllabus,” comes from the professor at the front of the class.  “And a seating chart.  These will be your seats for the rest of the year.”

Jackson is glad to see Stiles prevented from talking, but he hates literally everything.  He’ll be stuck next to him for every day for the rest of the semester, which means he will have to put up with Stiles’ endless talking for weeks.  Jackson wants to stab himself in the eye with a fork; it would probably be more pleasant than feeling his brain slowly leak out of his ears when Stiles starts blabbing in the morning.

Class passes quickly, and the professor lets them out slightly early.  Jackson packs up his materials and prepares to follow Danny out of the row quickly.  Stiles stops him, his big hand on Jackson’s textbook.

“Look, I don’t care if you’re there.  I would be happy if you didn’t come.  I was just surprised.  I mean, I thought based on the way you were watching Scott and me the other day that you would be interested in another chance to get your rocks off seeing the two of us together, right?”

Jackson freezes.  He can feel the smug expression on Stiles’ face, even though he hasn’t turned his head to see it.  He didn’t think Scott or Stiles saw, and the fact that Stiles is acting like he knows something he doesn’t is infuriating and embarrassing, in equal parts.  

“Fuck off,” Jackson says, not at all defensively, or anything.  Stiles’ grin widens, and Jackson wants to punch him in the face.

“Apartment 201, in the new building on Green Street.  This Saturday at 9 PM.  Be there, dude.”

And then, Stiles is off, before Jackson can fit a word in edgewise.

He can already tell that it’s going to be a long semester.

* * *

 

Jackson had heard things about the new building on Green Street.  He had heard that it wasn’t finished when it was time for people to move in, and that some of the rooms on the upper floors didn’t have internet access for weeks into the semester.  He’d heard talk of mold and of mixed up rooming assignments.  Everything he’d heard indicates that it is an absolute shithole, in spite of it being shiny from the outside, and there’s nowhere he wants to spend his Saturday evening less.

Yet, he somehow finds himself pushing the button for Apartment 201 at precisely 9:34 PM.  He has all manner of excuses ready for why he’s there.  He doesn’t have anything better to do.  He wants to talk to Scott and Stiles, to set the story straight on what was happening, to dispel their perception that he was somehow into them being potheads.  He’s there for the free booze, and he has frat friends that are going.

He would never admit out loud that the fact that Scott invited him means something.  If it were Stiles all by himself, Jackson would’ve settled comfortably with his ‘fuck no’ instincts.  It bothers him, a little bit, that Stiles asked for Scott.  He wonders if maybe it was actually really Stiles who wanted him to come, if it will be some sort of grand attempt to humiliate Jackson by proving that he could get Jackson to come by attributing it to Scott.  That’s exactly the shit that Stiles would pull, even now that the part of Stiles’ resentment of Jackson that was inspired by Stiles’ uncomfortable Thing for Lydia has faded some.  

Jackson griped about the invite for days, psyching himself out more and more, until Danny finally called him out on it, saying he was ridiculous and telling him to just go to the party.  Danny said he’d show, too, but Jackson isn’t actually sure that was a promise.  More likely than not, it was Danny saying it just to pacify Jackson and to convince him to buck up and find out the story for himself.

It worked, either way.  The door to the building makes a beeping noise as it unlocks for Jackson, and he heads up to the second floor.  He barely knocks before the door is opening, Scott grinning at him through the crack, a quick, “Glad you could make it, dude,” before Jackson is whisked inside.

The apartment is a more spacious shithole than Jackson expected, though it’s only a one-bedroom.  Jackson figures it’s probably all they can afford, and that it probably doesn’t matter, since the two of them probably only use one room, anyway.  Why get a room for a person they aren’t going to use, unless they were going to bring someone else in to collect rent money?

Scott leaves him with the drinks, heading over to Stiles and whispering something in his ear.  Stiles unsubtly glances in Jackson’s direction, which makes everything abundantly clear.  Stiles kisses Scott long and hard before making a beeline to Jackson.

“Thought you didn’t want to come to our boring party?” Stiles teases, and all the excuses Jackson had ready fall dead on his tongue.  He pours too much cheap vodka and not enough coke into a red solo cup, but even with stalling, he only spouts a brilliant, “Shut up.”

Stiles laughs, and the sharpness of it grates on Jackson.  “Don’t think you’re getting a show today, anyway.”

“I didn’t come to watch you fuck your boyfriend,” Jackson spits.  “I came because Danny is coming.”

“Never said anything about fucking, though I know what you’ve been thinking about, now.  And he’s not my boyfriend, just so you know,” Stiles says, patting Jackson on the shoulder.  “Have fun with Danny.”

Jackson wants to scream when Stiles zips off to join Kira by the snacks.  He feels like he’s in a worse place than where he started, which, for someone as goal-oriented as him, feels like a failure.  He can only hope that Stiles isn’t running to Scott and sharing about the conversation, the two of them laughing over Jackson thinking about them having sex.  It isn’t even _true_.  Jackson has spent a lot of time and effort ensuring he doesn’t imagine Scott and Stiles in bed together.  He has more self-control than that.

The other part of what Stiles says, though, is interesting to Jackson.  He had assumed that Scott and Stiles were together, because they are always… together.  They’re always touching and laughing and clinging to each other, sharing inside jokes and picking at each other’s food.  It’s always been one of Jackson’s few saving graces; he didn’t have to even think about Scott if he was Stiles’, if Stiles was his.  There was no hope, not one single possibility that he could ever have anything with either of them, if they were together, caught up in each other.

The fact that Stiles has always hated him helps.  But there was always Scott.  Frustratingly earnest and patient as a co-captain on the high school lacrosse team.  Frustratingly good as an alpha where Jackson was a beta with no alpha of his own.

“Why does it matter?” Malia asks when Jackson tries to confirm with her that Scott and Stiles aren’t boyfriends.  “You smell horny around both of them, they’d probably bone you together if you asked.”

It’s the worst thing that Jackson could have heard.  He downs his drink and goes for another, because vodka won’t betray him like that.  Even vodka has never suggested he try to bone Scott or Stiles, let alone the two of them together.  And rum has never once suggested that he smells horny around Scott or Stiles, which is why rum is a much better friend than Malia.

He can feel himself hitting comfortably tipsy and going past it, because when he’s unhappy and drunk, continuing to drink always sounds like a good idea.  He can feel himself hit the point when he starts to lose parts of conversations, where he feels very sleepy and a little bit sloshy.

There are missing patches and fuzzy patches, isolated bits of conversation that stick in Jackson’s head.  He remembers Malia and Stiles grinding together.  He remembers Danny and his DJ checking in.  He thinks there might have been a point when someone tried to initiate body shots, but he doesn’t think it went anywhere.

He also has a vague image of Scott’s face too close to his, Scott’s arm on his shoulder.  Jackson doesn’t know if he made that one up or not.  He doesn’t remember a lot of what happened.  But he’s more sure of the only other fleeting memory of the night, of warm arms around him, leading him carefully through the apartment.

It feels surreal when he wakes up in Scott and Stiles’ bed, stripped down to his underwear and tucked under the covers, with Stiles’ arm around him and little memory of how he got there.  

After putting on as much of his clothing from the night before as he can find, he bolts, his head aching enough that he stops at Starbucks on the way back.  He’ll save his panic for when he’s coherent enough to worry about what exactly he might have done, or said.

* * *

 

Jackson gets back to the house and settles in, guzzles water and strips his clothes off to take a nap.  He wakes up to his phone buzzing next to him.

Unknown Number 2:15 PM: do u want ur sock

Unknown Number 2:16 PM: im holding it hostage if you dont reply

Unknown Number 2:16 PM: i mean really who leaves with only one sock

Unknown Number 2:16 PM: do u not like left socks or something

Jackson Whittemore 2:19 PM: What the fuck

Unknown Number 2:19 PM: do u want ur sock or not

Jackson Whittemore 2:22 PM: Is this Stiles?

Jackson Whittemore 2:22 PM: How did you get my number?

Unknown Number 2:23 PM: Scott

Unknown Number 2:24 PM: who got it from danny

Unknown Number 2:25 PM: who wants to know how ur hangover is

Unknown Number 2:26 PM: i dont care, but scott slept on the couch last night bc u kept kicking him off the bed

Jackson Whittemore 2:27 PM: Scott was in bed with us, too?

Unknown Number 2:27 PM:  yeah dude.  do u not remember that?  i knew u were plastered, but...

Jackson Whittemore 2:28 PM: Oh fuck off

Jackson Whittemore 2:29 PM: The hangover is fine.

Jackson Whittemore 2:29 PM: Waking up with your nostrils staring down at me I could’ve done without

Unknown Number 2:31 PM: what were u hoping for, waking up to my dick?

Unknown Number 2:32 PM: bc sorry dude, i know u want the d, but ur gonna have to ask sober

Jackson Whittemore 2:40 PM: Fuck you, I don’t want your dick

Jackson Whittemore 2:40 PM: I don’t want you at all

Jackson Whittemore 2:41 PM: You’re an asswipe and completely undeserving of my time

Unknown Number 2:43 PM: sure u dont

Unknown Number 2:43 PM: keep telling urself that

Unknown Number 2:44 PM: but seriously do u want ur sock, bc i have to drop something off at the house for one of ur bros

Jackson Whittemore 2:45 PM: Fine, whatever

Jackson Whittemore 2:55 PM: And I don’t want your dick

Jackson Whittemore 3:02 PM: I don’t care at all about your dick

Stiles doesn’t respond, and it nags at Jackson.  It feels too much like giving Stiles ground, or something to hold over Jackson’s head.  Jackson almost wants to keep fighting it, to keep convincing Stiles, but he stops himself from digging himself into a deeper hole.  The messages are already sent, and Stiles is coming over at an undetermined time.  Even tired and still a little hung over, Jackson isn’t pathetic enough to let himself refresh the messages again and again and watch for Stiles to reply.  

So Jackson puts some of his clothes back on, his underwear and jeans, and he waits to hear Stiles’ loud, obnoxious voice.

* * *

 

Jackson slams against the wall, his shoulders pushing back to flatten his shoulder blades against the unyielding surface as Stiles presses in close.  Jackson twists his hand in the soft fabric of Stiles’ hoodie and uses it to pull him closer.  If he’s doing this, if he’s letting things escalate, he isn’t going to let Stiles walk away unaffected.  Stiles can goad goad goad all he wants, can have the satisfaction of mashing Jackson’s buttons with his fingers and watching Jackson respond, but Jackson isn’t going to let him walk away untouched.

Jackson’s sock is on the floor, and Jackson doesn’t care at all.  He never cared at all about the sock.  He has plenty of socks.  But the sock brought Stiles here, in Jackson’s face, grinning wide and crooked while he talks about Jackson walking around shirtless like it’s a revelation, all, “Wow, you really do want my dick, dude.”

The frustrating thing is that, as much as Jackson wants to deny it, Stiles isn’t wrong.  But the hollows of Stiles’ cheeks are flushed, red and blotchy, and Jackson isn’t sure if it would be more satisfying to lick the skin there or to punch it, to make the red last longer, pooling under the skin as bruises.  Jackson has been wanting to deck Stiles for years, since before Stiles did it to him, back in the high school at night, when Stiles left an ache that settled under Jackson’s skin, drawn out for days afterwards by Jackson’s fingers, pressing to feel the sharp sting that faded too fast.  

Jackson wonders if Stiles has the same itch under his skin, the same need to leave something behind for it to feel real.  From the way Stiles pushes his face close to Jackson, only hesitates a moment before he’s sucking Jackson’s bottom lip between his and _biting_ , digging his nails into the skin of Jackson’s hips, Jackson would suspect he does.  It isn’t nails down Jackson’s back, like Lydia used to do, but it’s enough to bring Jackson crashing down, to bring him out of his head and tumbling into the feeling of his mouth against Stiles’, hot and wet and rough.

“I hate you,” Jackson says when Stiles pulls away, gives him a second’s respite to catch his breath.  “I hate you so much.”

Stiles, with his red lips and his pink cheeks and his dick hard in his pants, laughs.

“Doesn’t matter, does it?  Not when you want me this much.”

“I don’t want you,” Jackson hisses.  “No one wanted you in high school, and no one wants you now, especially not me.”

Jackson remembers the thin, weedy boy with his hair shaved close to his head who pined and chased and bemoaned his virginity.  He remembers the boy who smelled so strongly of arousal that Jackson’s nose clogged with it every time he was close.  He remembers the boy who was on a razor’s edge all the time, who would’ve decked Jackson again for pointing it out out loud, if Scott didn’t stop him.

This isn’t that boy.  There’s something just as sharp in his gaze, but there’s assurance and confidence there that weren’t three years before.  It’s that that’s more terrifying than anything; the knowing, almost gleeful expression paired with the knowledge they both share that Jackson’s just grasping at straws.

“Malia wants me.  Scott wants me,” Stiles says.  “And you want me _and_  Scott.  You don’t get either of us unless you ask for it.”

Jackson is hard in his jeans, and he knows all he has to do is say the word and he could have Stiles pulling them down, sucking his dick into his mouth.  He knows that he can fix this, that he can have what he wants.

He also knows that having what he wants is a double-edged sword, is Stiles’ ridicule and teasing, is the shame of begging to be fucked.  It’s something Jackson needs, sometimes, but not like this.  Not with Jackson still aware and alert, not with Stiles standing in front of him, just as fully present.  Asking for it feels like losing control in a way he isn’t ready to admit to, not when it would be easier to spiral down into fucking and deal with the shame and implications later.

“Fuck off,” Jackson spits, and he gently pushes Stiles away.  Surprise flashes across Stiles’ face, his jaw dropping open, his eyes going big.  It’s almost enough to cut through the scent of Stiles’ smug arousal that’s stinking up Jackson’s room.  His face goes guarded too quickly, though.  Guarded and angry.  He puts a foot of space between him and Jackson.

“Fine,” Stiles says.  “But I’m not going to come running for you.  You’re just a douchebag with intimacy issues, and you’re not worth my time.”

Stiles storms out of the room, and Jackson can feel his heart pounding in his chest.  He sinks to the ground and sits, his back still pressed against the wall, while he tries to sort through what’s going on in his head and his body.

His dick doesn’t go down fast enough, and he’s too angry and spiteful to take care of it, knowing that it’d be jerking off to Stilinski.  He’s worth Stiles’ time.  He’s worth the time of people better than Stiles, more important than Stiles.  And he has people running after him all the time.  He doesn’t need Stiles, and what Stiles said shouldn’t be affecting him at all.

Jackson does want Stiles, though.  Even he can’t deny it, to himself, though he’ll continue to deny it out loud.  And the words “not worth my time” circle around his head, making him feel more nauseated than angry.

The words mean less, coming from Stilinski.  But they’re not far from the “not enough”s that cycle around again and again unprompted, just when he thinks he has control over his life and can be proud of his accomplishments.

Jackson sighs and picks up the sock that had fallen to the floor.

He thinks some more vodka is in order.

* * *

 

Jackson decides that the best thing he can possibly do in this situation is to avoid Stiles, and, by extension, to avoid Scott.  Avoiding Scott is easy; every once in a while their frats do things together, but not frequently, and with both of them studying totally different subjects, they don’t run into each other all that often on campus.  Jackson isn’t Scott’s beta, so there’s no mysterious tug towards Scott, or any bullshit like that.

Stiles should be easy to avoid.  He doesn’t do Greek life.  He doesn’t live on campus.  He mostly drives, so there’s no chance of Jackson running into him just walking around.  Jackson has no idea what he’s studying, and is not actually sure Stiles knows what he’s studying.

The problem is that Jackson _does_  know what he’s studying.  He’s studying business, and, inexplicably, Stiles sits right next to him in his accounting course.  It isn’t a class Jackson can afford to drop, and, even more inexplicably, Stiles doesn’t seem to have any intention to drop it either.  He skips occasionally, but he typically shows up, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8:30 AM, and plops down with his coffee in the seat next to Jackson.

Perversely, it would probably be easier if Stiles sat there and rambled, like he does when he’s around Scott or Malia or the others.  Jackson could blow him off, ignore him, pretend he isn’t there and complain later to Danny about how Stiles won’t shut up.  Stiles mostly doesn’t say a word, though.  He just sits there, glancing sometimes at Jackson and staring knowingly, licking his lips and fidgeting with his fingers.  

Jackson finds himself looking back more than he’d like.  At first it’s because he’s waiting for Stiles to break the silence, to say something awful.  He expects that Stiles will use the chance he has to totally humiliate Jackson, at the very least in front of Danny.  Jackson starts dreading the time before class, because he sits there watching and waiting every day, Stiles’ fingers, tap tap tap against the desk.  Stiles’ teeth tugging at his lips, his tongue swiping across the cracked skin to soothe the bumps.  Stiles always looks like he’s just on the verge of saying something, his finger circling the rim of his drink’s lid.

And then class starts.  

It’s maddening, and Jackson wants to reach out and shake him, to tell him to say something.  It would mean Jackson would be free from this loop he’s trapped himself in.

It’s easy to be mad at Stiles when his mouth is open and spilling out bullshit.  It’s easy to be aroused by Stiles when his attention keeps getting drawn to the parts of Stiles that are easiest to picture around Jackson’s dick.  It’s hard to mask the arousal when he doesn’t have his anger to hide behind, when he only has the frustration of wanting.

It’s two weeks into the impasse that Jackson is pretty sure is only in his head when everything finally cracks open.  Danny gets sick, the kind of sick that isn’t actually anything more than a cold he’ll be over in a few days, but is a perfect excuse to blow off the 8:30 business class Danny’s only taking because his advisor told him he shouldn’t have his entire schedule loaded with computer science courses.  Danny is Jackson’s buffer person, his excuse to turn away from Stiles and face the other direction when Jackson finds himself fixating too much.

The seat is empty, and Jackson is unbalanced.

Nothing is different.  There is literally no difference, except that Danny is missing for one single morning.  But Jackson has let things stew for too long, has let all of the little things boil over until he’s sitting in a pool of distrust and anxious, pent-up energy.  He’s spent too much time thinking about Stiles, cycling everything through his head.  Thinking about how it felt to have Stiles’ long, lean arms bracketing him in, how it felt to have Stiles’ hips pressed against his.  How it felt to have those lips that Stiles chews so much locked with his own lips.  How smug Stiles looked when he walked away from Jackson, like he was ahead of the game, holding all the cards, and was just waiting for Jackson to catch up and beg on hands and knees.

Stiles sits down, and Jackson is so, so, so painfully aware of every move he makes.  Every careless fidget, every leaning of Stiles’ body closer to Jackson.  Jackson has an exit plan ready and everything.

Class starts, and the professor announces he’s speaking at some conference and has to leave, but that he’s handing out assignments to be completed in pairs of no more than two people.  Jackson can already see Stiles glancing in his direction, inching closer to him.  Jackson doesn’t hesitate at all to state, as firmly as he can muster, “Fuck no.”

Stiles’ head tilts backwards, his eyebrows raised.  “Dude, who else do you think is gonna actually work with you?  You’re the supreme douchebag.  Like, Jackson Whittemore and Giant Douchebags are synonyms, you could probably see your face next to the words in an encyclopedia.  I don’t even want to work with you.”

“Perfect,” Jackson says.  “I don’t want to work with you either.  Find someone else.”

“Oh shut up,” Stiles says.  “I don’t want to, but I, unlike you, am a Mature Adult who can suck it up for an hour.”

“You,” Jackson says, as flatly as he can possibly manage.  “You, a mature adult?  Sure, Stilinski, whatever you wanna tell yourself.  Maybe when you stop dressing like you’re 12, that’ll be easier to believe.  Or maybe when you learn to buy chapstick like a normal human being.”

“I don’t know, I think you like the fact that I bite my lips.  You spend enough time looking at them…”

“Because I want to shove my entire fist between them, so maybe you’d stop blathering on, for once.”

“Uh,” a voice behind them says.  Jackson cranes his neck to see a girl glaring down at them, her sheet of questions in her hand.  “Can you two shut up and work already?”

Jackson feels shame burning in his gut.  He can feel his hands balled up into fists, and he wants to tell them to quit watching, to dismiss it as Stiles being a fuckwad.  He doesn’t think that would help his case any, though.

“Look,” Stiles tells him.  “Everyone else is paired up.  Danny’s not here.  These questions should take us 40 minutes, max.  Can we just get this over with?”

“Fine, whatever,” Jackson says.  He knows he sounds as surly as he feels, but he doesn’t care enough to hide it.  He just wants to brush through this so he can turn in his answers and get the fuck away from the classroom and from Stiles.  

* * *

 

Stiles’ hands are down the back of Jackson’s jeans, though they’d be more useful around front, undoing the button and the zipper and pulling them off.  Jackson’s hands are under Stiles’ shirt, feeling the abs he didn’t believe were there, not after all those years of Stiles hiding from undressing in front of the rest of the team in the locker room.  Stiles is nowhere near as sculpted as Jackson is, but his chest is firm under Jackson’s fingers, lean like the rest of him.  

“Lock the door,” Jackson orders him, but Stiles snorts.

“No one’s out of class for another half an hour,” Stiles complains, pulling Jackson closer.  “Besides, you can’t really be that ashamed of people seeing you, or you wouldn’t have dragged me here.”

Jackson pulls away, forcing Stiles’ hands away from their comfortable position on his ass.  “I’m going to fucking lock the door if you won’t.”

He doesn’t get that far, though.  He’s in front of the door, reaching out to figure out the lock, when he feels the warmth of Stiles’ body pressing in behind him, pushing him against the door.  The edge of the doorknob jabs into Jackson’s side, and Stiles puts his mouth on the back of Jackson’s neck, the skin just below Jackson’s collar, the skin where Derek once dug his claws in deep.  It makes Jackson shiver, and Stiles takes advantage, his body moving even closer, Jackson’s already hard dick pressing uncomfortably against the wood of the door.  

“Are you sure you want to?” Stiles asks, his breath prickling hot against the sensitive hairs at the back of Jackson’s neck.  “If you do, go right ahead,dude.  But I bet you’d like this better.  Me holding the door closed with your body.  Someone pushes a little too hard and they get an eyeful, but I don’t think you’d have a problem with that, either.  I remember the stunts you and Lydia used to pull, making out in the corner at parties, showing off in the school hallways.  You always did like being shown off, didn’t you?  Liked other people seeing just how easy it was for you to get exactly what you wanted.”

Jackson’s heart beats fast in his chest, and he brings his hand down to rest on the long metal doorknob.  His head is racing with the possibilities, with the idea that he could get caught, that he could be seen with Stiles wrapped around him, hopelessly turned on.  It wouldn’t be anything, now.  He could shake this off with only mild embarrassment.

His dick throbs, though, at the thought of going further.  Of letting Stiles fuck him against the door, of walking out with his hair ruffled and his face sweaty and his breath ragged, new bruises littering his neck.  Of walking to his next class that way, sitting in his seat and fidgeting uncomfortably in his messy underwear, haphazardly cleaned before a line for the bathroom could form.

He thinks of the possibility of being seen doing more, his mouth around Stiles’ dick, or Stiles’ mouth around his.  The thrill of being caught is undeniable, because every once in a while, Stiles is right.  Jackson does like showing off, does like being seen.

His hand releases the doorknob, giving up on the lock, and Stiles huffs a laugh into his neck.  “You _do_  like that, don’t you?  Everyone watching you get what you want.  What if that isn’t what they saw, though?  What if you didn’t actually get what you wanted?”

Jackson’s breath catches, because that sounds entirely too knowing for someone who shouldn’t know a goddamn thing.  That’s something he and Lydia used to love, just another part of the way Lydia understood him; Jackson likes goals, but doesn’t like setting them himself.  There are few ways Jackson likes being told no, few ways that Jackson likes being told he needs to try harder and to be challenged more.  They’re there, though, buried deep, and Lydia understood that, had spent ages with her hands around his cock, her pink nail polish vivid neon that stood out against his red cock, telling him “just a bit longer” as he squirmed under her touch, on the edge of splattering come everywhere.

There’s no reason for Stiles to know that, and he must be grasping at straws, but it hits Jackson harder than he should.  He pushes backwards, grinding against Stiles’ cock until Stiles presses harder, leaves him flat against the door and gasping.  Jackson scrambles to cover it up.  “If this is a set-up for you saying you’re an asshole who likes getting blown but doesn’t do shit in return…”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Stiles says, awed.  “You’d let me do that to you.  You’d let me get off on you, grind against your back just like this, or let me use your mouth.  And if I told you you didn’t get to come, you’d just… go to your next class.”

“No,” Jackson bites out.  He doesn’t want to set a precedent for this, to tell Stiles he’s allowed to fall into this when this is all they have, angry kisses traded against Jackson’s bedroom wall and this.  Stiles stills, and Jackson gets ready for more words, for more things that will cut Jackson to the core, but they don’t come as quickly as he expects.

“I _did_  say you had to ask for it,” Stiles finally says.  Jackson groans, but Stiles presses forward before Jackson can get a word in edgewise.

“Just tell me what you want,” Stiles says.  “No bullshit.  Just tell me.  Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it, no matter how fucked up it is.  I promise you I’m probably into a lot more fucked up things.”

The earnestness is the scariest part of everything; Jackson can hear in Stiles’ voice that he’s serious, and he can feel himself shaking.  There’s something terrifying about the possibility there, and about placing the things he wants in the fidgety hands of Stiles, of all people.

“Fine,” Jackson says.  “Just.  Fucking do it.  Rub off on me.  Don’t get me off.  Just… do something, okay?  Shut the fuck up and do _something_.”

Stiles plasters himself along Jackson’s back, melting there.  He thrusts, fluid motions of his hips that Jackson wasn’t expecting; when he’d let himself imagine, those brief and infrequent moments before he buried it deep in the corners of his mind, sex with Stiles was always impatient rabbit thrusts, more boy than man, desperate and needy.  This isn’t quite that.  It’s rough around the edges, both of them clothed and hasty, pressed close together against the bathroom door in the business building.  There’s not the space for perfectly timed thrusts, or perfectly even pressure.  But Stiles knows what he’s doing, knows how to take what he needs from Jackson’s body, knows how to bury his moans in Jackson’s back.  Jackson’s practically shaking, his underwear wet from the precome dripping from his cock, when Stiles’ hips stutter and still, one last, long moan that settles into heavy breathing.

Jackson is tempted to reach down into his pants and finish off, but he doesn’t.  He lets Stiles peel himself from Jackson so Jackson can back away from the door, aching but not entirely unsatisfied.  Stiles’ cheeks are flooded red, and his eyes are dewy, and Jackson is filled with an odd emotion he hasn’t felt in a long time, the feeling of being _useful_ , even if he didn’t get everything he could’ve.

“You okay to go to class?” Stiles asks.  “Your face is all... bumpy.  From the door.”

“I’m fine,” Jackson says, though he glances in the mirror to see that Stiles is right.  His cheek is pink, small lines of indents from the wood.  He takes quick stock of himself and finds that, dick aside, he doesn’t feel unsettled or off.  “Go take your afterglow somewhere else.”

It isn’t until Jackson is adjusting his dick in multivariable calculus that he realizes that Stiles was almost gentle afterwards, like he Knew Jackson needed checking up on.  Jackson doesn’t linger on it long, but it buries itself in the back of his head, along with the other few things he knows about Stiles that are frustratingly Not Bad.  

He knows they’ll resurface that night when it comes time to jerk off in the shower, but he can’t afford to dwell on them now.

* * *

 

Jackson is a constant swirl of questions in the aftermath of what happened in the bathroom.  The fact that this was the second time they verged on _something_  together means that Stiles’ plausible deniability is probably just as low as Jackson’s.  Stiles had wanted that, had wanted to leave Jackson aching and yearning and scrambling to obey.  Stiles had wanted his cock in Jackson’s mouth, or ass, or wherever Jackson would let him put it.

It’s scary that Stiles seemed to have this inherent sense for what it was that Jackson needed.  It’s scary that Stiles was right, and that Stiles offered to give it to him.  It’s scary that Jackson was so desperate for it that he let Stiles give him some small measure of it, let someone who made a point of actively and loudly hating him all through high school take control.

Jackson sits through the class afterwards totally incapable of focusing.  He didn’t dip far enough that his ability to take notes is fucked up, but his heart is pounding in his chest, and his dick doesn’t want to seem to go down, because he keeps _thinking_  about it.  The adrenaline of the moment, the impulsiveness that hasn’t felt this prominent since he was a reckless teenager so desperate for power to cling to that he sought Derek Hale out and asked for the bite.  But this is en entirely different kind of recklessness, at its core.  This is handing over his body to Stiles, of letting Stiles dom him.

Because that’s what that was.  Jackson hates using the words, always called Lydia his girlfriend and never his _mistress_  or his _dom_  or whatever.  It feels too formal, like something set in stone.  Jackson doesn’t want anything set in stone with Stiles.  He doesn’t even know if that’s something he can let himself have again.  He’s still shaken by the idea that Stiles already had some inkling that Jackson wanted it, to some degree needed it, even.  Jackson and Stiles aren’t close.  It’s scary to think that he’s that transparent.  Or, that he’s that transparent to Stiles.  Aside from Lydia, this is only something he’s had in flashes and spurts, a night with a stranger who fucked his throat and called him a pretty boy as Jackson choked on his dick, a date with a friend of a friend that ended with Jackson’s wrists rubbed raw.  Jackson hates that none of it sticks around, healing that he doesn’t know how to stop carrying away the evidence before he can fully enjoy it.  It’s scary how much he misses it.

It’s even scarier to ponder the idea that that’s something he could get used to from Stiles.  Jackson resents the idea of giving that to Stiles, of leaving himself in Stiles’ hands.  It isn’t like Jackson hasn’t stumbled into things without thinking about it before.  That isn’t the case with Stiles, though he wishes it were.  There’s a lot of pent-up aggression, there, a lot of frustration and dislike and a mixture of other feelings that Jackson would rather not acknowledge.  But Jackson has thought about it.

Jackson isn’t a moron, though.  Just because Stiles hasn’t fucked him over _yet_  doesn’t mean Stiles _won’t_  fuck him over, and relying on Stiles to be good and to take the high road when he can take Jackson apart and leave him in pieces seems naive.  Jackson knows that Scott was always the trustworthy one of the pair, and that...  

Is something Jackson is not going to think about.  Scott’s eyes flashing red as he pins Jackson down, leaving bites and bruises that actually linger on Jackson’s new werewolf skin.  Does Scott have to be his alpha to make them last?  Jackson doesn’t actually know.  He does know that if there was even a moment in time when it seemed like he could test it out with Scott and see, he’d take it in a heartbeat.

Stiles, though, is different.  Jackson hates him, hates every single thing about him, from his smug face to his ridiculous mouth to the abs that Jackson now knows exist.  Jackson may or may not get off three or four times thinking about it over the weekend, but it’s really not his fault, and it definitely doesn’t mean that if Stiles goes for a round two, Jackson is going to say yes.  Or even wants to say yes, right?

Right.

* * *

 

Jackson is at a bar.

It’s a shithole, the specific kind of shithole that shows up in university towns, where the booze is shitty and the facilities are poorly-lit and poorly-maintained and the floors are sticky and the bathrooms are disgusting and nobody complains because the drinks are dirt cheap and everyone whose fake slides by is either too relieved or too plastered to care how much of a shitshow it is.  Very few fakes don’t pass, in this particular bar, which Jackson has on authority has only stayed open for as long as it has because the owner is a son of a skeezy politician.  

It isn’t Jackson’s scene.  It hasn’t been Jackson’s scene ever, not even when he was a high school kid.  Being Danny’s best friend and having money has always ensured that he had quality fakes, good enough to get them into the nicer Beacon Hills clubs, getting plastered and puking on slightly cleaner floors and promising never to do any of it again.  Jackson would honestly rather be at a club than at this dingy bar, but he wasn’t the one who picked the place.

Stiles is already shoving his way to the bar when Jackson comes in.  He stands out; in spite of the darkness, Stiles is a flash of color, a purple hoodie that makes Jackson wonder if he’s ever spent a single thought on how to dress himself, or ever had to try at all.  Jackson makes it look like he doesn’t have to try, but Stiles doesn’t actually try.  Things just fall into his lap.

Jackson wonders if maybe he’s enabling that for Stiles right now.

He’d gotten a text that morning from Stiles, “meet me in the bar”, and Jackson said no.  He slipped the phone back in his pocket and went back to making his breakfast, and Danny had just watched him the entire time, waiting for Jackson to sit down with cereal.

“You’re gonna bang Stilinski tonight, aren’t you?” Danny asked.  Jackson spluttered, because he never said a word, and as much as Danny enjoys the knowledge bomb, he isn’t actually psychic.

“Scott told me he was going to the bar tonight to try to get laid,” Danny explained.  “You and Stiles have been eyefucking all semester.”

Jackson was adamant that he wasn’t going to fuck Stiles, and Danny had just smiled mildly.  Jackson wishes so badly that he could have stayed strong just to spite Danny, or even to spite Stiles.  Jackson hates more than anything the feeling of needing something, the rush in his head when he thinks about the potential for what he could have, the almost self-destructive tug in his gut that brought him to text Stiles, “Fine.”  The tug in his gut that brings him closer to dependency or ruin, or both at once.

Danny would tell him he’s being melodramatic, and that fucking someone he hates isn’t the end of the world, but Jackson doesn’t think Danny gets it.  Danny’s an asshole, but Danny’s good, and everyone likes Danny.  Danny doesn’t have that constant need to be the best and the worst at once, to see how far he can push someone until they’ll push back, harder, maybe hard enough to satisfy Jackson.

As much as Jackson hates himself for it, he thinks Stiles maybe gets that, better than anyone.  

Stiles does a U-turn when he sees Jackson, abandoning his charge forward through the crowd to the bar and weaving his way to meet Jackson.  It’s painfully obvious from the deliberateness of Stiles’ movements and the clarity in his eyes that Stiles is sober.

Stiles is sober.  Jackson is sober.  Jackson almost wishes he weren’t.  It would be easier than the heaviness in his gut, the intense realization of what that means.  It means Stiles’ bright eyes dark brown in the lighting, fixed on Jackson, stripping him raw.  It means not being able to hide behind excuses, no slurred speech to dull the impact of the words Jackson says, the way his heart beats fast when Stiles responds.  It means the thrill of anonymity, of being in a bar where no one knows their names, where no one will see them and whisper.  Jackson isn’t even sure he’d care if they did.  He feels reckless, weightless and heavy and needing to move.  It’s too much, and nothing’s even happened.

“Hey,” Stiles says.

“Hey,” Jackson replies, and he waits for the hostility to come crawling back, for the moment to shatter into grit and glass, shards so sharp it makes it easy.  He waits for an excuse to snarl, to turn the nerves and anticipation into something he can use, something he can hide behind in the absence of alcohol.  He waits for an excuse to get angry and bitter and in Stiles’ face, righteous anger to fuel him down onto his knees.

The anger and the spite never come, but Stiles does.  Stiles comes with a condom wrapped around his dick, the only thing separating Jackson from smearing his lips and cheeks in the smell of Stiles’ arousal.  Stiles comes with one hand yanking Jackson’s hair, with Jackson moaning, his throat raw, his voice hoarse, his knees sore.  Stiles comes braced against the rickety stall in the bar’s bathroom, his breathing too heavy and his moans too loud, cutting through the conversation outside the stall.  

Jackson’s mouth tastes like latex and his jaw aches and his cock leaks and he wants nothing more than to shove his hand down his pants and finish himself off.  But he holds off.  His head is a loose fog, the aches and pain just short of enough to get him where he wants to be, just short of making it worth sucking Stilinski’s dick.  Jackson hopes for more, hopes that Stiles will say something or do _something_  to nudge him down that last little bit.

Stiles’ phone starts buzzing in his pocket.

Stiles gestures for Jackson to stand, and he does, even as Stiles reaches into his pocket and swipes at his phone to answer.  Disappointment and bitterness settle in when Stiles says, “Hey, Scott,” casually, like he didn’t just get the best fucking disgusting bathroom stall blowjob Jackson could give.  It isn’t surprising, and Jackson can’t put his finger on why it upsets him so much, but Jackson’s stomach sours, and he reaches for the handle of the door.  He’s ready to bolt, to stew in his anger and the “I told you so”s coming from inside his own fucking head, self-sabotage at its finest.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Stiles asks, holding the phone away from his mouth.  He grabs Jackson’s arm with his left hand, loosely enough that Jackson could pull away if he wanted, easily.  

Jackson doesn’t.  He lets Stiles tug him back in, lets Stiles pull him close and clumsily unbutton Jackson’s pants, slowly tug the zipper down.  Stiles keeps talking, laughing at something Scott says on the other end, and Jackson feels unsettled, unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing.  Stiles presses a few buttons and switches the phone to his left hand.  Speaker phone, Jackson realizes as Scott’s voice fills the bathroom stall, slow and throaty, too many giggles and not enough words.

“Keep quiet,” Stiles whispers into Jackson’s ear, “and don’t come yet.”

Stiles’ warm hand on Jackson’s dick is an outward breath, the rough rub of denim from jeans that haven’t even been tugged down off his hips, and slow, steady pressure.  Stiles keeps talking to Scott but looking at Jackson, his eyes sharp and hungry.  Stiles’ eyes and the way Stiles’ body turns in towards Jackson let Jackson know that he’s not secondary, that Stiles is trying hard to seem so nonchalant.  That and the smell, Stiles’ smugness and curiosity bleeding out over his come and his post-orgasm satisfaction.

The facade still gets under Jackson’s skin.  It digs into the part of Jackson he doesn’t let others see much, humiliation feeding into arousal feeding into more humiliation.  Jackson should be angry or confused, should probably yell at Stiles for whatever this is.  He feels like Stiles’ dirty little secret as he bites his lip, his face going hot from trying to muffle even the sounds of his loud, panting breaths.  Jackson doesn’t know if Stiles even realizes he’s created the perfect combination of factors to get Jackson embarrassingly wet.  The barest bit of attention making him scramble to be good, to earn Stiles’ Stiles praise.  The instruction to be quiet, to make himself go unheard, even when all of Jackson is aching to let Scott hear him, to see what Scott does with it.  The instruction not to come when Jackson is spiraling into a pit of embarrassed and horny and desperate.

“Did you end up meeting up with Jackson?” Scott asks through the phone, and Jackson’s heart beats fast, hard and loud enough that Jackson’s almost afraid Scott can hear it through the phone.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, “we met up for a while.”

“But you didn’t take him home?”

Jackson shakes, clinging to Stiles’ orders in his head, ‘don’t come yet, don’t come yet, don’t come yet,’ on repeat.  He tastes blood from digging his teeth into his already puffy lips, and he wonders if his eyes would flash blue if he opened them.  Self-control seems like a foreign concept to him, when it’s only Stiles’ words keeping him grounded.

“Jackson isn’t the kind of boy you bring home to bed,” Stiles says, and Scott goes quiet.

“If you’re sure,” Scott says, and everything in Jackson is itching to tell him no, that Stiles is wrong.  “Give him an orgasm from me next time you see him, wherever it is you two are doing it.”

It’s a miracle Jackson holds on from there.  He loses track of time, knows he can hear Stiles laughing and Scott talking, is vaguely aware of Stiles pocketing his phone.  He knows when Stiles turns his attention back to him, fully, when Stiles says, “Let me hear you,” and his hand speeds up and Jackson’s noises spill out, almost without him being aware of them.  He’s past the point of rational thought, into that perfect space where he doesn’t have to think, where the pain of his claws digging into the palms of his hands is a dull twinge, more pleasure than anything.  Scott’s and Stiles’ instructions mingle in Jackson’s head, and when Stiles tells him to ask to come, to let him hear it, Jackson doesn’t remember the words he’s said the moment they leave his mouth, because Stiles is telling him to go ahead, telling him to come all over himself.

Jackson’s floating and Stiles is wiping his hand on the toilet paper in the stall.  Jackson is vaguely aware of his lip and hands healing, his teeth and nails going blunt and human.  His head doesn’t start to clear at all until after Stiles has cleaned as much of the come off him as he can and guided Jackson outside the bar to get him some fresh air, called a cab to get them home.

Jackson’s room is empty, so Stiles comes in with him.  Jackson doesn’t ask him to, but he’s glad Stiles does.  Jackson is riding out the haze and the fuzziness, but Jackson knows what comes after, the embarrassment and shame and uncertainty that can leave him feeling empty for days if he’s alone when it hits.  

Stiles is quiet.  Too quiet, almost, and it should be unnerving.  They get settled into Jackson’s bed, though, and when they strip, Stiles doesn’t move towards sex.  He sends a few texts and chills, and when Jackson’s insecurity hits, Stiles sees it on his face.

“I had fun,” Stiles tells him.  “Not nearly as much of a pain in the ass as you seem, and your mouth is amazing.”

Jackson huffs a relieved laugh, and the two of them go back to silence.  Jackson closes his eyes and lets his body get heavy, mellowing out until he can feel sleep ready to hit.  He’s just on the edges when Stiles speaks one last time.

“We should talk tomorrow about your thing for Scott,” he says, “because when I told you to ask to come, ‘Please, Scott,’ isn’t quite what I had in mind.”

* * *

 

Jackson wakes up with Stiles next to him, face pressed into the pillow and ass in the air.  Jackson’s mouth is dry and his throat is sore.  He’ll have to steal some cough drops from Danny to tide him over.  He doesn’t spend much time on the thought.  He has much more important things to worry about that he becomes aware of as his brain starts to wake up.

Things like the fact that Stiles is next to him, and doesn’t look like he has any intention of waking up soon.  Or like the fact that he said the wrong name during sex, or that Stiles thinks he has a _thing_  for Scott.  Or the fact that Scott knows that he and Stiles are having sex in the first place, and not only didn’t seem to mind, but was actively encouraging it.

“ _Give him an orgasm for me_.”  Jesus fuck.

Jackson goes to get water from the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror.  His hair is messy, but there aren’t marks to look at, and there’s no lingering sex flush.  It’s pretty surreal, feeling like the earth has shifted under his feet, but not being able to observe any of the changes by looking.  He remembers when he and Lydia first started having sex that was charged with this.  His thighs were just as red from the lipstick prints as they were from the hickeys.

He’s in the process of brushing his teeth when Stiles stumbles into the bathroom, his eyes virtually closed from sleepiness.  Where Jackson’s hair’s a little messy, Stiles’ is a haystack, sticking up at the oddest angles.  Paired with drowsy eyes and lips licked wet from morning dryness, Stiles is almost comically sleepy.  Jackson hates the seed of fondness that’s there.  He pushes it away, because repressing feelings is a Whittemore specialty.

Stiles takes up the space in front of the sink, splashing water onto his face to wake himself up.  “Move,” Jackson mumbles through a mouth full of toothbrush spit, and Stiles shuffles just far enough to the right for Jackson to wash the spit down the sink.  Stiles seems perfectly at ease sharing a bathroom and a sink, and Jackson has to wonder, against his best judgment, if this is something that Scott and Stiles do every day.

“Buy me breakfast and we’ll talk,” Stiles says.  

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Jackson responds easily.  He wishes he could make it up to his usual, sneering standards, but he can’t.  It’s too early in the morning.

“I don’t want to talk to you either,” Stiles says, “but we should talk.  So you’re gonna buy me IHOP.”

There’s one two blocks from the frat house.  Jackson could say no.  No one’s forcing him to do anything, and in broad daylight, outside of sex, Stiles has no power over Jackson.  Jackson hasn’t given him any.

“Fine,” Jackson still says.  “Hurry up and get your clothes on.”

The walk over and ordering their food all happens in silence.  Jackson isn’t hungry.  He just gets a cup of coffee.  Stiles orders a giant plate of food, though, and when it comes, Stiles opens his mouth to eat and talk at the same time.

“I’m like you, you know.”

Jackson surveys Stiles’ messy hair and day-old, sweat-stained purple hoodie and gives a skeptical look.  Stiles rolls his eyes, hard.

“Not like that, you asshole.  I mean that I’m a sub.”

It makes sense, honestly.  Jackson would’ve pictured him that way before, a mouthy sub and a bossy bottom.  It’s a little harder now that Jackson has vivid images of Stiles being very much not a sub, but it really isn’t beyond Jackson’s imagination to conceive of it, especially since Stiles knew to follow Jackson home the night before and look out for him.  Jackson doesn’t typically need a lot aftercare, but being left alone fucks him up a lot.

“At least, some of the time,” Stiles continues.  “Really I’m a switch, but most of my partners have been doms.  Malia, definitely, and now…”

“Scott,” Jackson says.  He tries to keep his voice even, tries the trick where he sips at his drink a lot and looks aggressively bored and neutral until people thinks he doesn’t care. 

“Scott’s a switch, too,” Stiles says.  “But he mostly doms, so I mostly sub.”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.  I don’t actually care.”

Stiles shovels a huge bite of pancake into his mouth, and Jackson has to look away.  Stiles chews with his mouth open, and then tries to talk.  Jackson shoves Stiles’ water at him, his face screwed up in disgust.  “Swallow, then talk.  Your food’s even less attractive than you.”

Stiles chews loudly, his mouth wide open, just to prove a point.  Jackson questions every single one of his life choices that brought him to sitting across from Stiles.

“I’m telling you because you care,” Stiles says, which is exactly the opposite of the point Jackson was trying to make.  “You’re subby as fuck, you know.  Scott’s known since high school.  I’ve known since high school.  I’m pretty sure the whole school has known since high school.  But there’s stuff I don’t know.  Like if we’re gonna keep doing this, is there stuff I should avoid doing, or stuff you really want me to do?”

Jackson almost doesn’t want to tell Stiles.  He’s gotten away with things so far because they’ve been going with things as they happen.  Talking about limits is an even more formal acknowledgement than going to the bar the night before.

“Don’t leave me, after,” Jackson finally tells him.  “Just… tell me to do whatever you want, or hurt me, or embarrass me, or whatever.  Just don’t leave.  Especially if I tell you to stop.”

“That’s my big thing,” Stiles tells him.  “You telling me to stop if you need to stop.  My other big thing is that I hate being tied up, but that’s not really relevant to you.  So I just need to know you’ll safeword out if you don’t like something.”

“I’ve never had any problem telling you when you’re full of shit, and I’m not gonna have any problem telling you if you’re doing something I _really_  don’t like,” Jackson says.

“Asshole,” Stiles says, and Jackson is pretty sure it’s actually intended to be fond.  “I have something I want to try, then, and you’re either gonna kill me or love me.  Or both.”

“You’re giving me an out to kill you, great,” Jackson deflects.  He’s way more interested than he’d like to admit.  He’s impatient, but he knows Stiles is, too.

If Stiles already has something in mind, that means he isn’t going to have to wait long to try it out.

* * *

 

Stiles keeps his cards close to his chest for a week.  Jackson tries to ignore how unnerving it is that he doesn’t know what the fuck Stiles is up to; Stiles has never been good at keeping secrets, not even when they were high schoolers and the supernatural world was changing around them and Stiles thought he and Scott were being stealthy.  Stiles won’t give Jackson an inch, though, and Jackson’s not going to feed Stiles’ glee for having knowledge to hold over his head.  As impatient and itchy as Jackson is, he waits, because sooner or later, Stiles is gonna break.

It comes on a Saturday afternoon when Jackson’s doing homework in the library.  His frat is having a party that he isn’t required to go to, and as appealing as looming and looking superior with a drink in his hand is, he’s not letting his grades slip.  The library is uncomfortably quiet and gives him flashbacks from Beacon Hills, but it’s better than sitting in his room and having his door banged on by drunk, giggly girls trying to get in his room to hook up with each other.

Danny starts livetexting him updates from the party, but once they start being more about the terrible DJ than who’s getting fucked, Jackson powers his phone down.  He needs a half an hour without distractions to just sit there and bully his way through a dry reading.

When he turns it back on, there aren’t any messages from Danny, but there’s one single message from Stiles.  Usually when Jackson gets texts from Stiles, it’s drunk dick pics or a slew of messages all at once, and Jackson has to tell Stiles to shut up, because he doesn’t give a fuck about whatever superhero movie Stiles is going to see with Scott.

Today, though, the message is simple:

Asswipe 2:33 PM: scott’s working, come over

It’s a booty call text, and that should bother Jackson.  In high school, Jackson would’ve torn him to shreds, because Jackson had power and Jackson had status.  Jackson sends booty call texts, he doesn’t get them.  But Jackson’s been waiting too long to dismiss it, and it’s hard for Jackson to ignore for more reasons than just his impatience.  Jackson hasn’t been in Stiles’ room, not since the night he drunkenly stumbled out of Stiles’ bed.  Every time they’ve hooked up, it’s been out or it’s been in Jackson’s place, even when Stiles’ bed was closer.

Jackson still isn’t going to make it easy on him, though.

Jackson Whittemore 2:43 PM: I’m working in the library

Asswipe 2:43 PM: what r u doing that for

Jackson Whittemore 2:45 PM: Some of us are actually good at school

Asswipe 2:46 PM: god do u have to be a jackass all the time

Asswipe 2:48 PM: here i was gonna be nice and fuck u

Asswipe 2:49 PM: make u come all over the couch so scott can smell u later

Jackson Whittemore 2:55 PM: Fuck off

Asswipe 2:56 PM: i mean if u wanna get fucked by ur books instead…

It doesn’t make a bit of sense, but Jackson doesn’t bother to point that out.  He has a pretty good idea where it would go, and while Jackson is sure Scott doesn’t mind getting dick pics at all hours of the day, Jackson doesn’t need Stiles’ dripping cock staring him down from his phone while he’s sitting in the library, surrounded by people.  

Jackson glances down at his textbook.  He doesn’t actually have that much reading left; if he buckles down, he can get it done in 10, 15 minutes max.  He can pack up and be at Stiles’ apartment in a half an hour.  He can have his hole open on Stiles’ fingers, Stiles’ dick.

As appealing as the thought is, it almost has him putting his phone away, message unanswered.  He hates how easy he’s become for Stiles.  Jackson has always played hard to get but never been hard to get.  Hopping into Stiles’ bed the second he texts feels like admitting too much.  

After five minutes with no response, the dick pic comes anyway, blurry and off-center.  It shouldn’t be sexy.  It’s not even a _good_  dick pic.  Stiles’ cock is leaking come at the tip already, though, and the sensory memories of how it tastes, how it feels when it’s heavy on Jackson’s tongue, has Jackson squirming in his chair.

The people from the table over glare at him.  He flips them off and stares down at his open textbook, the tiny text swimming on the page.

Jackson Whittemore 3:02 PM: be there in 20

He goes back to his reading.  With how long Stiles made Jackson wait for this, Stiles can stand to wait ten minutes.

* * *

 

The arm of the couch is hard, digging into Jackson’s skin with every thrust.  The fabric is rougher than it looked when Stiles told him what he was going to do to him, when he told Jackson to strip and Jackson’s mouth went dry, when Jackson said as firmly as he could, “Make me.”  Stiles understood.  Jackson was so relieved it was palpable when Stiles skipped the kissing, when Stiles said lowly, “You _did_  keep me waiting.”  Jackson was almost grateful for how easily he took the choice from Jackson, how easily he wrenched Jackson’s jeans down around his ankles and ran his nails along Jackson’s back as he removed Jackson’s shirt.  Stiles lets his fingers linger on the scars from Derek’s claws, and Jackson shivers at the feeling of being exposed, only connected to Stiles through the tips of his fingers.

Jackson didn’t anticipate just how much the rough, uneven weave of the upholstery would redden his skin, his cheek and his balls dragging as he’s pushed forward on Stiles’ cock and tugged backwards by Stiles’ hands around his wrists, pinning his arms behind his back.  It leaves Jackson totally at the mercy of the steady but relentless motion of Stiles’ hips, Jackson fighting to catch his breath when Stiles pulls back.  It’s too much sensation, almost, Jackson’s cock wet against his abs, Jackson’s face leaving indents in the couch cushion, Jackson’s hole stretched full and sloppy on Stiles’ dick.  Stiles’ hand huge, wrapping around Jackson’s wrists and holding them together with an iron grip.  The steady thrum of arousal and the knowledge that it won’t matter until Stiles is filling up a condom with his come.  All of it alone would be enough to fill the ugly need inside Jackson to be used, to give up control of his body and to be left sore and defiled and marked.  Stiles isn’t gentle, with his hands or with his hips, taking everything he wants from Jackson.  

Stiles tells Jackson he can come, but only if he can come on Stiles’ cock.  Stiles tells Jackson that if he comes, Stiles isn’t going to stop, will fuck him right through the aftershocks to the point of oversensitivity and keep going, until Stiles gets what he needs.  Jackson has never come untouched before, though he’s tried, with Lydia’s hand holding a vibrator in his ass.  He’s desperately grasping for it, skirting around the edges of the orgasm and coming up empty, trying to bend low enough over the arm of the couch to get some friction on his cock, to get _anything_ , because anything would be enough right now.  He’s hanging by a thread, waiting for Stiles’ hips to start stuttering unevenly, for Stiles to spill inside him and mold his body to Jackson’s back, to tell Jackson firmly that his chance to come is over.  He’s waiting to shakily pull his pants back on, his cock still so hard it’s painful, because Stiles told him he’s done.

He’s not expecting it when Stiles opens his mouth and says, “God, you’re such a slut for this, aren’t you?”

Jackson’s body jerks, his face heating red from more than sofa burn.  Stiles doesn’t wait for an answer.  Jackson isn’t sure he could give one, if he did.

“Just letting me bend you over the couch like this,” Stiles says, his hips rabbiting faster into Jackson.  Stiles tightens his grip on Jackson’s arms, and Jackson nearly swallows his tongue.  “Out in the open, in the living room.  I bet you love that, don’t you?  Love the fact that Scott could come home at any time and see you with your slutty ass up in the air for me.”

Stiles’ words come heavy, rasped between breaths, but it doesn’t diminish the way they hit Jackson in the gut, make him painfully aware of how naked he is all over again.  He can’t see the door.  He can’t see anything but the wet spot his spit has made on the couch, the ugly print that’s seared into his brain forever.  He doesn’t have to see anything for the scene to spill out perfectly in his head.  Stiles keeps talking, painting things in vivid detail.  Jackson melts into Scott seeing him drip come onto the couch, Scott watching Stiles come inside Jackson, Scott taking his pants off and fucking Jackson’s already sloppy hole open even wider.  He breaks when Stiles describes Scott jacking off on Jackson’s back, smearing his come and his scent into Jackson’s skin, marking Jackson as his.  

Stiles thrusts more shallowly and evenly, and Jackson overcompensates, using every inch of leverage Stiles has given him to fuck himself back on Stiles’ dick.  Not coming isn’t even an option anymore, for Jackson.  He needs it with every inch of his body, so overwhelming it’s almost painful.

“I bet he’d let his eyes flash red for you,” Stiles says, “show you who’s alpha.”

Jackson’s dick jerks, splattering come on the couch cushion, his whole body going weightless even as his head is rushing with the weight of Stiles words, with the image of Scott’s eyes glowing red with his hands on Jackson’s body.  The shock of coming doesn’t settle in until after Stiles has already pulled out and let his wrists loose.  

Jackson is limp and unhelpful when Stiles maneuvers him so he’s sitting on the couch instead of sprawled over its arm.  The two of them sit in silence for a while, Jackson trying to find his way back into his head and Stiles messing around on his phone.  Stiles gets the two of them water and tosses the condom, making sure Jackson knows exactly where he’s going, and that he’ll be visible from the couch.  When he comes back with the glasses, Jackson holds his on his knee, watching the scrapes and bruises on his body heal in an almost detached way.  Jackson wonders what they’re supposed to do about the wet spots on the couch, but Stiles doesn’t seem too fussed about it.  Jackson wouldn’t be surprised if the couch is covered in come stains, and Jackson was just too preoccupied to notice.  

Jackson has no idea how much time passes.  It’s easy to lose track when there’s nothing anchoring him down except the weight of his body and the press of Stiles’ thigh against his still naked skin.  Jackson’s much more aware of his nakedness than he usually is afterwards, even though Stiles isn’t looking.  His skin tingles and pebbles as the air cools the sweat.  It’s the only thing that cuts through the fog of his head, the floatiness that he doesn’t usually experience for such an extended period of time.  It should probably freak him out, but he’s honestly more alert to the motion out of the corner of his eye.  

Stiles glances at his phone and then back at Jackson, typing for a little bit and then going back to Jackson, his eyebrows furrowed.  Jackson wonders if he’s done something wrong or if he’s crossed a line, and Stiles is just waiting to tell him.  The idea makes him intensely insecure, and it must show on his face or in his body language, because Stiles immediately asks, “You okay, dude?”

Having a question to focus on helps him take stock of himself.  Physically, he’s fine, though he doesn’t think that’s what Stiles is talking about.  The rest is more complicated, and Jackson gets sidetracked trying to sift through it all and put it into words.  He takes longer than he intends to, and before he can get any words out of his mouth, Stiles’ arm is around his shoulder, pulling him close.

“You were good,” Stiles says.  Jackson’s embarrassed by how much of the tension loosens from his shoulders, by how his body goes slack and leans into Stiles’ warm body.  “That might’ve been too much, from me, maybe,” Stiles admits.  “Talking about Scott that way, with everything else.  I just thought you might like it.  But you did everything right, and I was pretty impressed that you managed to get off untouched like that.”

“You were?” Jackson asks before he can stop himself.  His filter feels broken down; it’s not something he’d normally ask anyone, let alone Stiles.  It reeks of seeking approval and needing validation, which Jackson thinks is embarrassing and desperate from anyone, especially himself.  But he needs to know for the last knot in his chest to loosen.  He needs to know that he did what Stiles wanted from him, the way Stiles wanted it.

“You were perfect,” Stiles says.  “You weren’t even a bratty, mouthy dick, like I expected you to be.”

It soothes some of the uneasy bitterness that had made its home in Jackson’s gut. Jackson lets himself settle again, clinging to the praise that probably means nothing to Stiles but that seems to mean everything to Jackson right now.  It’s approval and it’s being _pleased_  with Jackson, maybe even proud.  Jackson craves that kind of attention more than he’d admit to anyone.

Stiles doesn’t stop, although Jackson is tempted to stop him once he becomes more settled.  Stiles’ mouth doesn’t stop running until Jackson disengages himself from Stiles’ body.  He’s humiliated and ashamed for needing that, even though Stiles is treating it like it’s totally normal.  More than anything, though, Jackson is physically and emotionally exhausted, so much so that when Stiles offers to let him crash for a while, Jackson takes him up on it.

“Was the Scott stuff too much?” Stiles asks nervously as Jackson reaches for his clothes.

“No,” Jackson says honestly.  He doesn’t have the energy to be anything but honest.  “It was good.”

“I thought so,” Stiles says, his mood swapping quickly to smug.  “Thought I had you worked out.  You’re always easy when Scott comes up.”

Jackson feels his stomach lurch, and he wants to go.  He wishes he were invulnerable, but now that he’s more removed from the scene, now that he’s back in his head, Stiles’ words make him feel afraid.  It isn’t a fear he would’ve expected when he started out with Stiles.  He wasn’t under any illusions back then that Stiles had any positive motive beyond sex being fun.  Stiles wanted someone who would go down easy for him, someone who was fun to push around, and Jackson was okay with being that person.  Jackson was okay with treating Stiles as a threat, a risk, and only giving him as much as he took from Jackson.  

Jackson has been letting himself go loose for Stiles, though, has been trusting him with sides of himself that even he’s ashamed of.  Jackson has been letting Stiles see parts of himself that other people struggled to be careful with, and Jackson is so, so naked.  

He regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth, but he’s feeling hurt, and he has to make Stiles feel what he’s feeling.  “You got something wrong, though.”

“ _I_ got something wrong about Scott,” Stiles says skeptically.

“Yeah,” Jackson says.  “You said you’d fuck me over the arm of the couch, and that he would, too.  I don’t think he would, though.”

“Why not?” Stiles asks.  “Trust me, dude, he’s fucked me over the arm of that couch plenty.”

Jackson smiles too wide and shoves the guilt to the corner of his brain to deal with later.  “Scott wouldn’t be ashamed to fuck me in a real bed.”

Jackson doesn’t forgive and he doesn’t forget, and he still has the clear mental image in his head, the smell of stale alcohol and the cramped space where he could hear Stiles’ every breath, the wry bite that accompanied, “Jackson isn’t the kind of boy you bring home to bed.”

Stiles’ gaze lingers on Jackson for a long moment, his face devoid of the intense emotion Jackson’s used to seeing spilled in the creases in Stiles’ forehead and the pout of Stiles’ lips and the shine of Stiles’ eyes.  The wait is almost worse than Stiles’ response.

“Yeah,” Stiles finally says.  “But I’m not Scott.”

* * *

 

When Jackson wakes up in Scott and Stiles’ bed, it’s dark outside, and he’s alone.  Jackson figures it’s time to make his escape; he’s not going to stick around any longer than he has to, not after what happened after the scene.  He doesn’t need Stiles making fun of him for it, now that he’s in a less suggestive mental state, and he definitely doesn’t need more confirmation that Stiles is ashamed of sleeping with him.  He decides to skip the shower and make a break for it.  If Stiles cares, he can text Jackson later.

His plan’s halted when he cuts through the kitchen and nearly bumps into Scott.

“Oh,” Jackson says.  Stiles’ words cycle around in his head, _you’re always easy when Scott comes up_.  He needs to get the fuck out of the apartment.  “I’m leaving.”

Scott goes bright-eyed and dimpled, and Jackson actually wants to hide.  There’s absolutely nothing good about being caught doing the walk of shame by his fuckbuddy’s roommate, especially when Scott starts grinning like seeing him is the best thing that happened all week.  It’s even worse when the grin makes Jackson’s stomach swoop.  

“You in a hurry?” Scott asks.  Jackson notices that he’s holding a spatula, and it slowly filters in that Scott is making eggs.  “Stiles had to head out, but I made enough for two if you want some.”

“I spent more time here than I meant to,” Jackson says, and Scott’s grin only widens.

“Good to know Stiles took good enough care of you to wear you out,” he says, and Jackson wonders if Scott knows.  He doesn’t seem like he does.  Scott is a lot of things, but cruel isn’t usually one of them.  Jackson almost wants to blurt out everything, to tell Scott how confusing everything was (is), but he pushes the urge down.  Scott has no reason to care.  Jackson has no reason to tell Scott.  He’s just feeling off, that’s all.  Jackson doesn’t care.

“Yeah, your boy is enthusiastic, that’s for sure,” Jackson says as wryly has he can manage.  Scott huffs a laugh.

“He’s not my boy,” Scott says, “not always, at least.  Just like I’m not always his.  We have other people.  But he’s definitely always enthusiastic.”

 _Except about me_ , Jackson thinks.  He knows it isn’t fair, but the beauty of being Jackson Whittemore is that he doesn’t have to be fair.  No one expects it from him.  It’s easier than fixating on the way Scott looks at him when he pointed out that they sleep with other people.  It’s way easier than fixating on the way that makes Jackson’s heart beat fast.  “Well, the sometimes-but-not-always-your-boy boy’s done with me, so I’m leaving.  Enjoy the eggs.”

“I’ll let him know,” Scott promises.  “You sure you don’t want to wait and get a ride home from him?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says.  “I’m positive.”

* * *

 

Stiles doesn’t apologize.  Neither does Jackson.  Jackson doesn’t expect that will change.  Then again, he also doesn’t expect himself to slide back into Stiles’ arms so quickly, and, well.  He does.  And then he does again.  He expects things to get sharper, meaner.  He tries his hardest to make them that way, because it’s easier than the alternative.  If there’s one thing he never abandoned from high school, one reason he and Lydia never worked, it’s that he still believes it’s always easier to strike first.  It always hurts less when he’s the one to hurt, because guilt he can manage, is a fucking pro at stifling.  It’s easier than being the one who’s caught by surprise, the one who started to feel something and has to watch it be trampled on.

It’s easier than what does happen, Stiles’ tongue licking apologies that Stiles’ words won’t give into Jackson’s hole.  It’s easier than Stiles giving Jackson praise Jackson doesn’t ask for, doesn’t deserve even as it’s buried in the sarcasm and the jumbled filth.  It’s easier than the way Jackson craves Stiles’ softness, the way he starts to need the bruises Stiles sucks into his skin, the ones that Stiles sucks deep and dark and purple and that fade before Jackson’s fully dressed.  

Stiles doesn’t bring Scott up for a while.  He sends Jackson knowing looks when Jackson and Scott are in the same room, Jackson looking to Stiles to avoid Scott’s steady gaze.  Stiles fucks Scott when Jackson’s still in the apartment, Jackson hearing their noises through the crack under the bedroom door.  Jackson tries not to let it get into his head.  Scott and Stiles are _Scott and Stiles_ , the same as they’ve always been, the same as they were when Jackson was young and green with jealousy.

But Stiles starts inviting Jackson over more and more when Scott’s around.  Stiles talks about Jackson to Scott, about fucking him and what he likes, like it’s casual conversation and like Scott can’t smell the mess of horny and humiliated Jackson becomes.  Stiles fucks Jackson hard in the shower barely big enough for two, coaxing out Jackson’s moans and whimpers and gasps when they both know Scott’s in the next room over.  

Jackson starts spending fewer afternoons in the frat house and more in Scott and Stiles’ apartment.  Danny teases him mercilessly for it, and he doesn’t even Know.  Not that that will last for long.  Jackson knows it’s only a matter of time before he tells Danny just how bad things have gotten.  Jackson has never been able to keep a secret from Danny, not even back in high school when his life was tipping upside down.  Once Danny knows, he will still tease Jackson, but at least it will be softer, so Jackson decides to save that for if things start getting wildly out of control.

Naturally, the if becomes a when.

When things finally come to a head, Jackson isn’t sure whether it’s intentional or not.  It feels planned, but Jackson isn’t sure he’s actually willing to give Stiles that much credit.  All he knows is that that day, in their morning class, Stiles invites Jackson over right after his last class, glances towards Danny and then back at Jackson.

“Don’t be late,” Stiles says with a wink, and the part of Jackson that’s become conditioned to respond lights up in spite of himself.  

“God you’re a mess,” Danny says, and Jackson shoots him a flat look.

“If you want me to bring up the time you wanted to bang _Matt_ …”

“I’ve learned from my mistakes,” Danny says.  “I don’t know that you have.”

“Don’t go looking brand new alpha werewolves when you’re as fucked up as I am,” Jackson responds.  “Think I’m good on that one.”  He doesn’t consider Lydia a mistake, and neither does Danny.  Jackson knows parts of their relationship were less than great, and that large parts of it were his fault.  He doesn’t have time for dwelling on that, now.  Being Critical of Past Mistakes can happen later, when he doesn’t have class and isn’t going to get fucked right after.

When class is over, Jackson heads to the apartment.  He calls up, and Stiles immediately lets him in.  Stiles has Netflix up on the TV screen, and he’s only wearing his underwear.

“Are we watching a movie?” Jackson asks him.  It can’t be porn unless it’s softcore stuff in a movie, and Jackson doesn’t think that Stiles would waste his time with that.  Stiles knows perfectly well how to find good porn, and making Jackson watch people on the screen fuck when he can be touching Jackson himself seems unlikely, anyway.

“ _I’m_  watching a movie,” Stiles tells him.  “ _You’re_  gonna keep my cock warm while I watch it.  You don’t have to blow me, just keep my dick in your mouth.  Make yourself useful, and all.”

It’s not something they usually do, but Jackson likes the idea of it.  It means that Jackson gets to have Stiles’ dick in his mouth for a long time, which Stiles knows is Jackson’s favorite.  Stiles has a nice dick, okay.  It’s not his fault.  Jackson knows Stiles presented it the way he did intentionally, because Jackson’s need to be useful has become more and more glaring the longer the two of them do… whatever this is.  That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have Jackson licking his lips and eyeing the bulge in Stiles’ underwear.

Jackson knows from experience that the carpet is soft on his knees, but Stiles hands him a pillow anyway.  Jackson kneels down on it and waits for Stiles to pull off his underwear and open his legs.

“Go ahead, already,” Stiles says, and Jackson runs his tongue along the bottom of Stiles’ cock before he finally gets his lips around the head of Stiles’ dick.

Jackson gets so focused on the ache of his jaw and knees and on breathing evenly through his nose and on Stiles absently playing with his hair that, when the door to the apartment opens, he doesn’t even notice.  He’s much more aware of the smell of someone new than anything else, because Stiles’ arousal and surprise and content all get kicked up enough to make him him aware of more than the strong smell of musk and dick.

“Oh,” Scott says, and it’s enough to jolt Jackson out of his happy place.  He freezes; for as much time as Jackson has spent with Stiles naked lately, Scott has never seen anything more than he ever did back in the locker room at Beacon Hills.  He definitely hasn’t ever seen Jackson and Stiles having sex.

“Hi,” Stiles says, gently guiding Jackson off his dick.  Jackson turns to look at Scott, even though he’s pretty sure it’s a terrible idea.  He isn’t sure what he’s going to see written on Scott’s face; probably jealousy, or disgust, or unease.  Maybe even just surprise.  He doesn’t expect Scott’s heavy eyes, his mouth parted.  He doesn’t expect Scott to zero in on his red, puffy lips or the curve of his ass.

“Hey,” Scott says, and, god, even his voice is rough.  It sends shivers down Jackson’s spine, and he wants to bury his face back in the space between Stiles’ thighs.  The whole room reeks of arousal; Stiles’ most prominent, still, but Jackson’s hasn’t diminished, and Scott’s…

If Jackson had ever been anything but glaringly, obviously transparent when it comes to how much he wants Scott, the way his mouth waters thinking about drinking in as much of that scent as he can completely shatters any illusions.

“Do you want me to go?” Scott asks, and it’s on the tip of Jackson’s tongue to say no.  The desire to ask Scott to stay is written in Jackson’s lips, still sore from Stiles’ cock.  Stiles is looking down at Jackson, waiting for an answer, and Jackson chokes.  

He wants.  He wants so much it hurts, so much he’s practically shaking from it.  It’s too much, and the words aren’t coming.

“This time,” Stiles says above Jackson, and Jackson wants to say no, but he’s also relieved.  He’ll have some time to collect his thoughts and string together the words for the feeling in his gut, or at least to deal with how overwhelming they are now that they’re _real_.  Now that Scott’s face was serious and earnest, now that he heard Scott’s heart beat fast.

Scott heads into the other room, and Jackson looks up at Stiles.  Stiles doesn’t say a word, at first, watching Scott until he’s out of sight, until the bathroom door clicks closed and locked.

“Well?” Stiles asks, his hand finding it’s way back to Jackson’s head, tugging gently as he buries his fingers into the longer hair just above the nape of Jackson’s neck.  “Get your mouth back where it belongs.”

Sucking dick is easy.  Sucking dick is the stress melting from his body, the thoughts clearing some until he can deal with them.  So Jackson leans back down, settles back on his pillow, and turns his attention to Stiles’ balls.

When the movie’s over, Jackson gets Stiles off, and Stiles, this time, returns the favor.  The afterglow doesn’t last long for either of them, though.

“Scott would fuck you,” Stiles says.  “Scott _wants_  to fuck you.  So don’t fuck it up, or I’m gonna hear about it every time he’s high.  Go get fucked in a bed, or whatever it is you want.”

Jackson doesn’t know what to say to that, especially when Stiles’ tone is rougher than Jackson’s voice.  He doesn’t know what it means, or what to do with the tang of bitterness in the air.

But if there’s one thing that Jackson is good at by this point, it’s doing what Stiles tells him to when it’s something he wants.  If Stiles says Scott wants Jackson, it seems too good to be true, but Jackson will trust him, this time.

“Okay,” Jackson says, finally.  “I will.”

* * *

 

Jackson doesn’t know how to go about initiating sex with Scott.  His usual approach to things is to wait for other people to approach him, to make them trip over themselves to impress him and then give them what they want, so it seems like they’re the ones who need it, instead of him.  Jackson has the distinct feeling that isn’t going to work with Scott.  Scott seems like he’d be above the kind of bullshit that Jackson is best at, and if that isn’t scary as shit, Jackson doesn’t know what is.  Jackson doesn’t even think that the way things worked with Stiles, push push pushing until there’s nowhere left to go but into each other, would work.

So Jackson plans to wait.  Jackson plains to wait and watch and hope that Scott is braver than he is.  Stiles seems skeptical of his plan.  Stiles has stories about his experiences with Scott, about how Stiles had to actually flat out say to Scott that he wanted to have sex with him, because Scott was so worried about making things uncomfortable for Stiles that he didn’t say anything himself.  Jackson isn’t worried about having that problem.  Jackson and Scott weren’t _friends_  in high school.  Jackson literally tried to blackmail him with dating Allison to get the bite.  Jackson had a restraining order on them both.  There were no warm fuzzy feelings, or anything approaching civility, until Jackson came crawling back from London.

Besides, it isn’t like Scott doesn’t know just how much Jackson wants him.  Jackson sees him around the apartment sometimes and goes red and aggressively trips over his words, like Scott’s a fucking Disney prince or something.  It’s out of control.  Jackson hates it.  But it means that if Scott doesn’t know, Jackson’s going to think Scott’s _actually_  a moron.

It never gets to that point.  It doesn’t even get to the point where Jackson gets impatient; at least, no more impatient than he already was.  

Jackson and Stiles have afternoon sex on the living room floor, and Jackson can barely keep his eyes open afterwards.  Jackson doesn’t have class, but Stiles does, so they rush things, Jackson squeezing around Stiles’ cock and riding him hard and fast, Stiles’ hands tight around Jackson’s thighs.  Jackson stays for a shower while Stiles packs his backpack.  Being alone in the apartment should feel weird, but Stiles and Scott encourage it, and he’s honestly there so much of the time nowadays that it doesn’t freak him out all that much.  He plops down on the couch and pulls out his books to get some homework done, but he starts to droop, and before he knows it, he’s dozing off with his book in his lap.

When the door to the apartment opens, Jackson sleeps right through it.  He dozes through Scott cutting through the living room to get to the bedrooms and through Scott working his way back to the kitchen.  He sleeps until there’s a warm hand tapping his shoulder gently, a quiet, “Jackson.”

He blearily cracks his eyes open to see Scott with a plate full of what looks like chicken quesadillas.  “Stiles told me you didn’t eat, and I made extra, you hungry?”

Jackson rubs the sleep from his eyes and moves his textbook to the floor with his backpack.  “Yeah,” he says, once he’s forced himself awake enough.  “Thanks, Scott.”

“I’ll go get you some water, too,” Scott says as he places the food down on the table in front of Jackson.  Jackson just blinks at it until the water comes and he can prepare his stomach for eating greasy food.  Scott sits down next to him and grabs one from the plate, and Jackson follows suit, getting his fingers messy and nearly burning the roof of his mouth on the melty cheese inside.

Scott talks while they eat, and Jackson mostly listens.  He feels much more awake, and he could jump into the conversation, but it’s kind of nice listening to Scott talk.  He gets excited talking about what he’s doing working in the animal clinic just off-campus, and while working with animals definitely isn’t Jackson’s thing, he can appreciate that Scott is into it.  The two of them eat their way through the entire plate of quesadillas, and by the end, he’s laughing at Scott’s terrible jokes.

Jackson washes his hands and uses some of the mouthwash in the bathroom while Scott goes to do dishes.  He starts getting his backpack packed up to go home, but Scott stops him.

“You don’t have to leave, you know,” Scott says shyly.  “I was kinda enjoying spending time with you.  You’re mostly having sex when you’re over here, and while I’d definitely not mind having sex with you, too, if that’s what you want...”

Jackson stops.  It seems so innocuous said like that, so innocent and genuine, “I’d definitely not mind having sex with you, too.”  It’s no less forward than the last time Scott asked about being there for sex with Jackson, because it’s still not an order, not an, “I want this and expect it from you.”  Jackson supposes that isn’t something he could really expect from Scott, when it comes to sex.  Scott’s far from perfect, but he’s too good for that.

But it’s somehow less intimidating this time.  Jackson is more prepared and less fuzzy than last time, and Scott made him food and told him terrible jokes.  They’ve been dodging around it for too long, and Jackson has been thinking about it the entire time, turned on and nervous and excited.

“If you wouldn’t _mind_ …” Jackson says.

Scott grins sheepishly, interpreting Jackson’s chickening out of asking outright as a jab.  “Okay,” he admits.  “I’d more than not mind.  I’d like that.  If that’s something you’d like, too.”

“I would,” Jackson tells him.  The smile Jackson gets in return is tentative but so pleased Jackson’s chest aches.  He hasn’t had a smile like that directed towards him in years, something so purely happy and shy.  It’s almost funny realizing that the boy in front of him is a true alpha, a head of a pack, someone feared by supernatural creatures across California.  It’s hard to believe that he’s directing that look at Jackson.  There are people who deserve that kind of smile, soft and sweet and excited.  Someone like Kira, who Jackson is sure gets it on a regular basis.  Someone like Lydia, the new Lydia that Jackson came back to, more secure in herself and less afraid of the world.  Not someone like Jackson.

It doesn’t seem like Scott uses the same metrics as Jackson, though, no _he deserves it_  and _he doesn’t_.  When Scott kisses Jackson, it’s soft.  It’s lips more plush than Jackson’s pressing gently.  It’s Scott over him on the couch, his soft hoodie pressed against Jackson’s bare skin, Scott’s hands brushing down along Jackson’s sides with a touch so light it’s like Scott’s afraid Jackson’s going to break.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Scott says, and Jackson’s heart is so full he wonders if Scott’s fears are so unfounded after all.

Scott gets off Jackson and helps him up, keeps his hand intertwined with Jackson’s as he leads Jackson to the bedroom.  Jackson follows, follows Scott to the room he’s only been in once, to the bed with its warm, soft sheets.  Jackson watches as Scott strips, as Scott’s smooth skin is outlined by the yellow turning orange sunlight streaming through the thin curtains.  Jackson wants more than anything to touch, to run his hands along the planes of Scott’s skin, through Scott’s gently tousled hair.  He wants to worship Scott’s thighs, with his mouth and with his hands.  He wants to kiss the crooked, quiet smile off Scott’s face.  He wants to make Scott feel good, so good that Scott wants to keep Jackson, that Scott thinks of Jackson as being at home here in his bed in the dimming light.

The bed dips around Jackson, and Scott’s there again, his fingers brushing Jackson’s nipples and his mouth dragging at the sensitive skin of Jackson’s neck.  Jackson’s head tips back into the bed, and he lets himself feel.

It’s the least kinky sex he’s had in a long time.  There’s no pinning him down or telling him how much or how little noise he’s allowed to make.  There’s no risk of being heard or seen, no quiet thrill of being touched under the table.  There’s not a single ounce of roughness to it.  

It’s still some of the most intense sex he’s had in a long time.  Scott doesn’t let him hide, makes every nerve on Jackson’s skin feel like a live wire.  Scott lavishes attention and touch like he could get off on that alone, spending ages with his tongue lapping at the rim of Jackson’s hole, Jackson’s cock so hard it’s already dripping precome when Scott tucks a single slick finger inside Jackson.  Scott whispers words into Jackson’s skin that Jackson hears with perfect clarity, washing over him and pulling him down, a “good boy” when Scott’s fingers find Jackson’s prostate and Jackson struggles to keep himself from bucking his hips up, a “god, you look amazing” when Scott pulls his fingers out and positions himself over Jackson.  Jackson can imagine exactly how he looks, dazed and open and sweaty and fucked out before he’s even touched Scott’s cock.

“I look pretty hot,” Jackson’s mouth says, because anything else would be terrifyingly honest, would leave Jackson even more open and vulnerable and raw than he already feels.

Scott laughs as he lifts Jackson’s hips like Jackson’s made of nothing, sliding a pillow under Jackson that Jackson thinks probably should’ve been there sooner.  Jackson wonders if Scott is as overwhelmed by this as he is, if Scott got so lost in Jackson’s body that his brain is only now catching up.  It’s the most reassuring thought Jackson has had so far, and he basks in it, whether it’s true or not.  The idea of Scott being that into him.

“You ready?” Scott asks, and Jackson says yes.  Scott fucks into Jackson slowly, Jackson feeling every single inch of Scott’s cock as it settles inside him.  There’s no condom, because neither of them is going to catch anything from the other; there’s just Scott, just Scott’s cock filling him up and Scott’s weight over him and Scott’s lips brushing another kiss against Jackson’s.

Some of the softness finally fades as Scott fucks Jackson.  Jackson is already so turned on that he doesn’t want slow and aching, and he fucks himself on Scott’s dick until Scott gets the idea, thrusting harder into Jackson where he’s still sore from Stiles earlier.  Jackson holds out as long as he can before he reaches down, his hand pressed between his skin and Scott’s, and starts jerking himself off.  When he finally comes, he squeezes tight around Scott, doing his best to drag Scott along with him as come splatters on Jackson’s hand and on both of their skin.

Jackson feels and sees when Scott finally comes, Scott’s mouth opening and his eyes squeezing shut, his cock pulsing inside Jackson.  Jackson doesn’t feel the come that Scott’s pumping inside him, but he’s aware that it’s happening, that Scott’s filling him up and marking Jackson inside as his.

Scott takes a moment before he pulls out, gives Jackson a few minutes where Scott’s weight is covering his own, where Jackson can hear and feel Scott’s heart beating fast and out of time in his chest.  It gives Jackson a few brief moments where he can feel his come smearing against Scott’s chest, and while that will be gross later, as gross as Scott’s come inside his hole, in the moment, it’s all Jackson could possibly need.  

Scott pulls out and rests next to Jackson, wrapping one of his arms around Jackson’s waist.  The sweat cooling on Jackson’s skin makes him shiver, and Scott covers even more of Jackson with his body, like being pressed against Scott’s thighs will warm Jackson up.

“How do you feel?” Scott asks earnestly, and Jackson nearly laughs, because it’s the most Scott question ever.  Jackson is next to him, fucked so well he feels obvious, and Scott is still asking him that.

“Good,” Jackson tells him, and Scott smiles into the crook of his neck.  

“Me, too,” Scott says, and Jackson’s smiling, too.

* * *

 

The first time with Scott feels a little bit too good to be true, so, naturally, Jackson assumes that it is.  Jackson definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say that he doesn’t get nice things, because he definitely does.  But he thinks Scott is too nice of a thing for him, even.  

It seems like, once again, he and Scott are measuring things by a different metric, though.

Jackson goes home with a very sore ass and Scott’s number in his phone.  He and Scott swapped, and he doesn’t expect anything to come of it until he wakes up the next morning to a picture of Stiles fast asleep in bed, his hair a mess.

“good morning!!!” Scott sends, and Jackson laughs, sending back, “Maybe not for Stiles.”

The texting keeps going.  Scott texts Jackson throughout the day like it’s totally normal, like they’ve been doing it for ages.  Scott texts almost more than Danny, and it’s actually kind of nice.  Jackson has to mute his phone during class instead of leaving it on vibrate, but even that he doesn’t mind, because he leaves class and has a message from Scott on his phone.

Scott talks to him more around the apartment, too.  Scott invites him to stay over on nights when Stiles is out.  The sex isn’t soft and smushy all the time, which is a huge relief to Jackson; it’s a good thing sometimes, but not an everyday kind of thing.  It’s obvious that Scott and Stiles talk, because some things that Scott does reek strongly of Stiles.  Some of the things that Scott says sound like he’s testing them out, like they came from Stiles’ mouth, and Scott’s just trying them on for size.  Most of it works for Jackson.  Even when Scott’s dirty talk is too raunchy to feel real coming out of Scott’s mouth, it works for Jackson.

Stiles wasn’t wrong when he called Jackson easy whenever Scott comes up.  Jackson is still bitter he said it, but Jackson is pretty sure Scott could sit there and say the alphabet when he’s fucking Jackson, and Jackson’d probably tell him to shut up, but would probably still be into it.

So they fall into a pattern.  Sometimes Scott fucks Jackson, his eyes bleeding red and Jackson baring his neck.  Sometimes Scott just kisses Jackson.  Sometimes Scott spends ages leaving marks, because it turns Jackson on almost as much as sex having Scott’s teeth in his skin, leaving bruises that actually last.  Stiles is way, way rougher with Jackson, but Scott’s marks are there for him to see the next morning when Scott wakes him up with the smell of food cooking.

The more time Jackson spends around the apartment, the more time he spends with Scott.  They do homework together and watch movies, cook food and eat takeout.  Stiles weaves in and out; he’s around to have sex with Jackson, still, but Scott tries to assure Jackson that he isn’t annoyed by Jackson being around so much, he’s just “at a busy point in the semester, that’s all”.  It is the last round of midterms, so Jackson guesses he understands that.  He’s had to expend a lot of willpower on the whole “actually studying and not spending all his time fucking” thing, himself.

Jackson finally spills everything to Danny after Lydia catches him making out with Scott at a frat event Stiles couldn’t make it to.  He goes ahead and puts out there how embarrassing he is, getting Actual Feelings for Scott, because the more time he spends sprawled on the couch with his head in Scott’s lap, laughing over a pointless comedy, or talking late at night about Scott’s mom, the more certain he is that what he’s developed are Actual Genuine Feelings.  

Danny grins, says, “Come on, dude, you think I didn’t know that?  I went to high school with you.”  And yeah, Jackson guesses it’s _probably_  something he should’ve come to terms with much sooner than he did, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a big deal.

Because Jackson has feelings for someone who seems to genuinely enjoy being around him.  No one genuinely enjoys being around Jackson.  Jackson is an asshole.  Jackson has no intention to _not_  be an asshole.  It’s a staple part of Jackson’s personality, and he’s pretty comfortable with it.  Scott doesn’t seem to mind all that much, though.

“Are you boyfriends, then?” Danny asks.  It’s a good question.  It’s one that Jackson actually doesn’t have an answer to.

“I don’t think so,” Jackson says.

For the first time since Lydia, though, he’s really, really hoping the answer is yes.

* * *

 

The end of the semester approaches way too quickly, and the stress starts to sink in.  Jackson put pressure on himself to be the best academically in high school, even though he knew he never could with Lydia there.  There’s even more pressure near the end of the semester now that he’s in college, because the grade for most of his courses rests on a midterm or two and the final.  Scott helps some, getting Jackson out of his head enough that his stress doesn’t hit self-destruct mode.  Stiles helps even more, when he’s around.  He’s not around so much, anymore; a lot of the time that Jackson does spend with him is in class in the morning.

After having sex with Stiles for most of the semester, he feels a little bit unbalanced seeing Stiles so much less.  He starts off thinking that it’s probably just the sex.  Stiles has fewer problems with the idea of using Jackson for sex, and that’s honestly what Jackson needs most sometimes.  He needs to be useful in a way that is not designed specifically for Jackson’s own pleasure, but for someone else’s.

The more comfortable he and Scott get, though, the less certain Jackson is that that’s actually the answer.  Scott has a lot of the same effects on Jackson that Stiles always did.  Scott gives orders during sex, taking the pressure of making decisions (or doing much of anything beyond obeying) off Jackson’s shoulders for a while.  Scott finds ways to make Jackson’s head feel fuzzy, though they aren’t always the same ways Stiles does.  Scott makes Jackson feel owned and taken care of and treasured, and always makes sure Jackson knows that he’s done well.

“It could be a feelings thing,” Allison tells him gently when they meet up for lunch and a study session.  “I know your head is up your ass most of the time, but there are things that aren’t.”

“It’s not a ‘feelings thing’,” Jackson insists.  “Who the fuck has feelings for _Stilinski_.”

“Scott,” Allison suggests.  “Malia, too.”

“Not me,” Jackson says dismissively, and he changes the topic of conversation.

The last night before classes end for the semester, he joins some of the other brothers working their way through a couple 24 packs of beer, though, and it gets him scrolling through his messages on his phone.  There are a bunch from Danny and Scott, one every once in a while from his roommate saying he lost his key again, some from Allison and from his friends on the swim team.  Jackson deletes a bunch that don’t matter anymore and starts scrolling again.

There’s only one recent text from Stiles.

Jackson doesn’t think before he texts Stiles.  He’s at that point of drunk where he doesn’t think that’s a problem.  He just knows that he wishes Stiles were there with him, because Stiles would be just as drunk as him and Stiles would be so clingy, smiling loose and easy and hugging Jackson without the excuse of sex.  Jackson likes Stiles’ hugs.  Jackson even likes it when Stiles opens his mouth and starts talking, sometimes.

Jackson Whittemore 1:34 AM: miss you

Jackson Whittemore 1:34 AM: miss your dock

Jackson Whittemore 1:34 AM: dick

Jackson Whittemore 1:35 AM: I am so drunk

Jackson Whittemore 1:36 AM: I just want you here wish me

Jackson checks his phone a few times, but Stiles doesn’t respond, so he puts it away.  He grabs another beer and tries not to think about Stiles, because he’s got a good buzz going, and he’s starting to make himself sad.  Wanting and wishing wears Jackson down, once he’s let himself start, and he’s not going to ruin his drinking with feelings.

Danny takes his phone away when he realizes, and Jackson forgets.  When he checks his messages in the morning, though, there’s no response.

“Sorry,” Jackson sends him, but there’s no response to that, either.  Jackson’s stomach sinks.  He’s sober, now, and he still wants Stiles there with him, telling him he’s a dick and demanding to know what kind of frat bro would keep his phone around when he’s drinking.

Jackson Whittemore 6:30 AM: What do you do when you have those feelings things

Jackson Whittemore 6:30 AM: And you make a fool of yourself

Allison Argent 6:39 AM: Oh Jackson

Allison Argent 6:39 AM: You dated Lydia for years

Allison Argent 6:39 AM: Surely you know by now

Jackson Whittemore 6:40 AM: Stiles doesn’t like The Notebook

Allison Argent 6:43 AM: You’re hopeless

It isn’t a very helpful response, but Jackson doesn’t press for more.  He knows what that means.  It means he’s in this alone.  He doesn’t know how things with Stiles have gotten to be the way they are, but he needs to talk to Stiles on his own.  He needs them both to be able to get past the mess they’ve created and actually genuinely talk, and he needs to do it fast.  The last thing he wants is for Scott and Stiles to go home for Christmas break with things still weird.

So Jackson uses his time before class that morning and makes a Plan.  It’s not a foolproof one.  It’s not even a really good one.  

It’s a very good thing he never actually has to use it.

Stiles shows up just before class starts, and Jackson doesn’t have time to talk to him.  Stiles doesn’t _look_  mad.  He meets Jackson’s eye a few times in class when someone asks a particularly inane question.  He grins at a note Jackson passes him, though he tries to hide the smirk from his face as soon as it shows up there.  The closer they get to class being over, the more fidgety Stiles gets, and the more Jackson gets himself ready for an Important Talk.

The professor lets them out 20 minutes early, and Stiles beats Jackson to it.  He turns to Jackson almost immediately, and says, “Scott wanted me to ask if you wanted to go to the movies this weekend to see the new Star Wars movie.”

“With him?”

Jackson can see almost immediately that it was the wrong question to ask.  Stiles’ face goes hard, shutting Jackson out.  “He has your number.  If he wanted to ask you out by himself, he would’ve used it.”

“By himself?” Jackson asks, and it finally sinks in what Stiles was asking.  “He wanted you to ask me to go out with _both_  of you?”

“Look,” Stiles says, and Jackson can already sense that this is going to end badly.  He starts mentally scrapping all hopes of reconciliation by the end of the semester.  “I know you’re all up on Scott’s dick, and you always have been.  I always knew I was a second best option, the dude you’d take because you couldn’t have him, even though we had pretty fucking amazing sex, and I thought for a second in there that you might’ve _actually_  given a fuck or two about me.  Just for a second.  But you wanted him, so I gave you a leg up and then backed off.  You have what you fucking want now, right?  You have sex with him in our bed and you have your Friday nights watching TV and you have your study dates.  I was fine with that.  I was giving you some space.  But Scott says you always ask about me, and then I got those texts, and Scott got all optimistic, all, ‘you don’t send drunk texts telling someone you miss them unless you have feelings!’, which I thought was optimistic.  I figured you were just looking for a drunk booty call.  But he told me to ask.  If you don’t want it, just say no, don’t fucking act like the idea of going out with the two of us is ridiculous.  We’ll go back to what we were doing before.”

Jackson feels shellshocked.  Stiles is breathing heavily, and Jackson wonders just how long he’s been holding all of that inside.  “I didn’t-”

“Just yes or no,” Stiles snaps.  

“When’s the movie?” Jackson asks, and Stiles’ eyebrows furrow.  “I want to go with you, but I need to know when the movie is.”

The shock on Stiles’ face is actually pretty offensive to Jackson.  “You want to go with me?”

“Star Wars is the geekiest, worst first date ever, and you’re going to be too into it for making out in the back of the theater when things get boring, but I meant the texts I sent,” Jackson says.  “I definitely miss your cock, but I also miss you.  I don’t know why, because you’re obnoxious and jump down people’s throats for things they never said, but I miss you.”

“I’m more than just a stepping-stone to get to Scott?”

“I mean,” Jackson says, “sometimes you need someone who’s going to call you a filthy slut and actually mean it, and that person isn’t Scott.”

Stiles grins, and for the first time in days, Jackson feels like he can breathe again.  “No,” Stiles agrees.  “That’s definitely not Scott.”

“Yeah,” Jackson says.  “So you aren’t a Scott stepping-stone.  Not in bed, and not… not in bed.  And I’ll go on your geeky date with you both.”

“You’re going to love it,” Stiles warns him.  “You say it’s geeky now, but it’s gonna be fucking awesome, and you’re going to love it.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

* * *

 

“There’ll be a reward if you’re good and aren’t an asshole to Stiles about this movie,” Scott tells him ahead of time.  “I know you don’t care, but this is a big deal to him.”

It’s a funny difference between Scott and Stiles; Scott always motivates him with rewards, while Stiles usually goes for punishments.  It’s effective either way.  Jackson doesn’t even mess around on his phone through the first few scenes of the movie, and he finds himself actually paying attention and watching the movie.  He’s missing some context that isn’t just basic cultural awareness, because he hasn’t seen the movies since he was a kid, but it isn’t a terrible movie at all.  

Stiles is still offended when he says it merely, “Wasn’t half bad,” but when Jackson has generally positive things to say about the characters and when Jackson doesn’t take every opportunity to put it down like Stiles seems to expect he will, Stiles forgives him.  

They grab food once the movie’s over, opting for fast food in the food court of the mall, because it’s close and cheap and open.  Scott pays for all of them, because it was his idea and because he offered, and the three of them sit and eat and talk.  Stiles keeps knocking knees with Jackson and bumping their feet together under the table of the booth, and Jackson moves his knees, thinking it’s unintentional.  It isn’t until Stiles does it again that Jackson realizes he’s trying to play footsie, because Stiles is apparently actually thirteen years old.  Scott seems to know exactly what’s going on, based on his Clearly Stifling Laughter face.  When Jackson rolls his eyes and humors Stiles, Stiles grins triumphantly, and Scott folds, his laughter blanketing the table.

“This better be a pretty great reward,” Jackson says, and Scott grins.

“I think you’ll like it.”

They make him wait until they’re back at the apartment to find out what it is, but Jackson isn’t going to deny that it’s worth it.  They kiss him and strip him down together, and then Jackson gets his mouth full of Stiles’ cock and his ass full of Scott’s, and it makes every bit of playing footsie okay in Jackson’s books.  He’s pulled back and forth between the two of them, filled everywhere by the two people he thinks he may actually like a lot, both separate and together.

“I’m not watching that movie again, still,” Jackson says when the three of them are done, risking harshing the afterglow to make it perfectly clear up front that he’s not falling into an indefinite number of years with Star Wars with them the way he did The Notebook with Lydia.

“Sure you aren’t,” Stiles says.  He leans in and kisses Jackson, first on his lips and then on his cheek.  It’s that moment when everything crystallizes, and Jackson realizes he’s pretty much doomed.

“Never,” Jackson says, but they all read it for what it is.

Jackson will watch the movie with them any time they want him to, for as long as they want him to.

* * *

 

It starts like this.  Sharp nails, sharp teeth, sore knees, sore throat.  Sore ass.  Dirty bathrooms and whispered words.  Secrets.  It starts with want, and all the things that Jackson won’t let himself have.

But that’s not how it ends.

It ends with sharpness and with softness, with pain soothed by kisses and praise.  It ends with three people in a bed, Jackson surrounded on both sides by people who make his heart beat fast.  It ends with sometimes theirs and sometimes his and sometimes each other’s.  

But that’s not quite right, either.

It’s an ending, but it’s also a new start.  It’s starting to learn to communicate how he feels outside of sex.  It’s starting to learn how to let himself have what he needs.  It’s starting to learn how to forgive himself when he sits in the back seat of a jeep headed back for Beacon Hills, his hand in Scott’s.  It’s Scott and Stiles deciding to lease with a slightly less shitty landlord for the next year, and Jackson deciding to move out of the frat house.

It’s Jackson finally being satisfied for the first time in a long time, satisfied with himself and with his choices and with his sex life and with his love life.

It’s not quite Jackson saying, “I love you.”  Not yet.  He’s giving it time.  But that will come.

This is only the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


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